› added 5 years ago

72

TIL that PETN, a very powerful high explosive, is used as medicine

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KY6oG TIL A man stole $200,000 and then murdered his entire family over an obsession with a Bulgarian webcam model.
BgwDx TIL that John Quincy Adams won the 1824 US Presidential Election despite only winning 32.7% of the Electoral College vote
l7JZ5 TIL: "Silhouette" is derived from the French finance minister, Étienne de Silhouette. de Silhouette's strict economies made his name synonymous with anything done/made cheaply. Before photography, silhouette profiles cut from black card were the cheapest way of recording a person's appearance.
yVkBV TIL in 1714, a Norwegian captain and an English captain had a 14-hour long ship fight. Afterwards, both ships were badly damaged and the Norwegian captain was running out of ammo. He sent an envoy to the English ship, asking if he could borrow some of their ammo. They said no.
dabK TIL more than 2000 elderly Hollywood writers, unwilling to write for explicit modern sensibilities, are now writing for Chinese television instead. They’re the Emmy-winning minds behind classic TV like Murder, She Wrote, Miami Vice & The Jeffersons.