› added 7 years ago

103

TIL an Aboriginal man planted a flag on the cliffs of Dover in 1988 and claimed England for the Aborigines

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Z89YY TIL in 1975, a Soviet naval officer led a mutiny onboard a frigate with the aim of toppling the government of Brezhnev. It failed after a standoff with half of the Soviet Baltic fleet, but an article about it inspired an insurance salesman named Tom Clancy to write his book, The Hunt for Red October
8KXP TIL “Porn Judge” is an official Chinese government job title. Judges are paid $32,000 per year to view porn all day and have the sacred task of “returning the Internet to a clean and safe state”. One judge is named “Wang Dong”.
g4n8 TIL that chess grandmaster Bobby Fischer literally spat on a US order warning him that a rematch in Eastern Europe would violate US sanctions. He played the match and then spent the next 16 years as a fugitive outside the US until his death.
78LbM Til in 2000, a convicted murderer on death row's execution was denied because he was "too fat to hang"
Z8llp TIL When Washington became president, he scrapped the plans for "Washington monument" as he didn’t want to use public money for a personal memorial monument. Long after he died, In 1833 a small group of Washingtonians established a society to raise private funds for the project and got it built.