› added 5 years ago

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TIL that 31 inmates of Louisiana's Angola prison cut their Achilles' tendons to protest deplorable living conditions. This prompted national news agencies to write exposé stories on inmate life, leading to prison reform.

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jg4X TIL that in England darts was considered a game of chance until a 1908 court case where a local champion demonstrated that he could hit any number on the board the court requested. Following the demonstration, the judge found darts to be a game of skill.
yjOe TIL that JFK said he wanted to, “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds.”
XrG8 TIL in the 1950s, a married duo had a live BBC radio program where the husband would seemingly transmit telepathic messages from the studio to his wife who was in a different location each episode (underwater, in a plane, etc) and would then repeat it back. Even now, it is unknown how this was done.
wG97 TIL there is a Super Smash Bros fanfic that is over 3x longer than the entire Harry Potter series
gMPX9 TIL: When Hall of Fame NFL Running back , Curtis Martin, was 15 years old, he was held up with a loaded gun to his head. The criminal pulled the trigger seven times, but no bullet came out. On the eighth trigger pull, the gun discharged while aimed elsewhere