› added 10 years ago

99

TIL that in 1970 the CIA sent an officer to Uruguay to teach their government torture techniques and methods to suppress the population. He was captured by the rebels and killed. One of the leaders of those rebels is now the president of Uruguay.

Read more spirituallysmart.com

via reddit.com

b9adj TIL Roman Polanski wanted to film a violent and nihilistic version of Macbeth in response to his wife and unborn child's murder. No studio would finance it given the parallels with his own life. But Hugh Hefner financed the movie. He had been partying with a Playboy Exec on the night of the murders.
4V6a TIL: The youngest person to build a nuclear reactor was a 14 year old named Taylor Wilson
QNkVX TIL If you heat the diamond in the open air, it will begin to melt and burn at around 700 degrees Celsius (1,292 degrees Fahrenheit). Burning a diamond without oxygen, however, will make it change into graphite (a crystalline form of carbon) before transforming into a fluid.
QJV4a TIL The murderous 'Mad Trapper of Rat River' led police on a month-long manhunt in the Canadian wilderness. The pursuit ended after a 150 mi (240 km) run and a shootout in which Albert Johnson (believed to be a pseudonym) was fatally wounded on the Eagle River, Yukon
0wJBj TIL In 1989, Russian psychic E. Frenkel was run over by a train while attempting to stop it with his psychic-biological power, after previously ‘successfully’ stopping a car and streetcar.