› added 7 years ago

164

TIL that Anna Politkovskaya, author of the anti-Putin book “Putin’s Russia”, was assassinated on October 7th (Putin’s birthday)

Read more theguardian.com

via ift.tt

kdV5 TIL there is a metal band called Hatebeak whose lead singer is an African grey parrot.
VMLbQ TIL that in the movie Noah's Ark, filmed in 1928, the flood scene at the movie's climax was created by actually dumping 600,000 gallons of water onto the set. Three extras drowned and many suffered broken bones. This led to the introduction of safety regulations for movie stunts in 1929.
78GmO TIL Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanack contained death predictions of real and fictional people as a marketing trick so people would want to see the results in the next annual almanac. Franklin would sometimes include false death reports of astrologers as a running joke.
6geZ TIL a drug 400-6000 times stronger than morphine was the gas used in the Moscow theater hostage crisis in 2002
Eg8xX TIL Canadian undercover officers posed as teen girls to catch a disgraced officer who flashed them while driving around private girls schools in Vancouver