› added 6 years ago

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TIL the US sent 15-year MLB veteran Moe Berg to a 1944 lecture given by Werner Heisenberg (of uncertainty principle fame) with orders to shoot Heisenberg if his lecture indicated that the Germans were close to completing an atomic bomb.

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via reddit.com

pNG TIL that Freddie Mercury is of Indian descent. His parents were from Gujarat (India) and he grew up in Zanzibar and India till his mid-teens.
9bPD TIL that the first music “streaming” service was invented in 1897. People in New York could call up the Telharmonium, an electric organ that took up the entire floor of a building, which would play live music through their phone speakers.
awgvN TIL that when the Mars lander Beagle 2 failed, it was assumed that the landing system failed and blame was placed on Colin Pillinger, lead scientist. After this he wasn't allowed to lead any more missions. He died a year before the lander was discovered intact, proving the landing system worked fine
lOkV TIL Three Yemeni men sued NASA for invading Mars. They claim that they “inherited the planet from our ancestors 3,000 years ago”. They based their argument on mythologies of the Himyaritic and Sabaean civilizations that existed several thousand years B.C.
69pxl TIL that Toyota Motor Co was originally named after it's founder Toyoda, but the name was changed to Toyota because it sounds better and in Japanese characters it is 8 strokes, a lucky number, versus the 10 strokes for Toyoda. (Obviously in Japanese, not anglicized spelling)