› added 6 years ago

244

Today I learned that when the Whittington brothers, of Le Mans 24h fame, bought Road Atlanta (the racetrack with the longest straight at the time in the US) in 1979, they used it to secretly land drug smuggling aircraft under the cover of darkness.

Read more jalopnik.com

via reddit.com

lGM5 TIL In Cuba, picking up hitchhikers is mandatory for government vehicles, if passenger space is available.
LkKVZ TIL that 119 years ago, Teddy Roosevelt "shocked the nation" by inviting a black man to have dinner with him at the White House. That man was Booker T Washington and that dinner almost got him killed.
D1ZDe TIL hat-makers in the 19th century regularly used mercury in the manufacturing of felt hats, which caused a high rate of poisoning and led to neurological damage like slurred speech, memory loss, and tremors. This was the inspiration for the Mad Hatter character in Alice in Wonderland.
DyDg TIL for 3 decades legendary female pro wrestler The Fabulous Moolah effectively controlled most of the female wrestling in the US, would allegedly sexually and financially exploit the women she managed, and sabotaged any female wrestler who could pose the threat of taking her place professionally.
NXLBQ TIL that the Lipka Tartars (in Lithuania) used the Arabic alphabet to write in the Belarusian language until the 1930s.