› added 6 years ago

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TIL Mary Queen of Scots (1586) plotted to kill Queen Elizabeth I with secret coded letters. Walsingham (Elizabeth's secretary) cracked the code. He sent Mary a letter using her code, asking her to list all people involved in the plot. She thought the code was unbreakable.

x6BEw TIL the Pentagon used to route all data wires through one wall so 9/11 could've been so much worse
1PrO TIL that the last execution by electric chair in the United States before Furman v. Georgia was done to James D. French whose last words before his death were “How’s this for your headline? ‘French Fries’”.
lQBB TIL at Chicago’s O'Hare airport a 20 year old Bill Murray made a joke to another passenger that he was carrying 2 bombs. Overheard by a ticket agent, a couple of U.S. marshals were summoned to search his luggage. They didn’t find any bombs but rather $20,000 worth of pot. Murray was then arrested.
kJ8b4 TIL that In April of 1815, Mount Tambora exploded in a powerful eruption that killed tens of thousands of people on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa. The following year became known as the “year without a summer” when unusually cold, wet conditions swept across Europe and North America.
LkmNv TIL that placebo (substance with no therapeutic value) is used not only in pharmacy to test drugs, but also in surgery to test the effect of intervention.It's called sham surgery, when surgical intervention omits the step thought to be therapeutically necessary. There was 53 sham surgery cases.