› added 11 months ago

40

TIL that in 1976, 3 men kidnapped a bus full of schoolchildren with the goal of ransoming them back for 5 million dollars. They tried to place the ransom call, but the line was busy, and they ended up falling asleep. By the time they woke up, the children had freed themselves and made it to safety.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

VBpr4 TIL Florence and the Machine was originally known as Florence Robot/Isa Machine, where Florence Robot was founding member Florence Welch, and Isa Machine was founding member Isabella Summers. Summers serves as the bands keyboardist, as well as songwriter and producer.
pYGdN TIL that the last round of Fifa World Cup Group Stage Matches are played simultaneously because of the Disgrace of Gijón. This is to avoid match fixing.
WkE64 TIL that the Nirvana drummer / Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl once filled in for a sick drummer of the band Cage The Elephant. He had one day to learn the songs after only hearing them a few times and played them perfectly.
5VVVr TIL that the James Bond Movies "The Spy Who Loved Me" and "Moonraker" strayed so far from Ian Fleming's novels that Eon Productions authorized the screenwriter for both, Christopher Wood, to write novelizations based upon the films, rather than promote the original novels.
698LZ TIL about Tarrare, a French spy and Performer who had such an appetite he would eat live cats and puppies, cadavers from morgues and was even suspected of kidnapping and eating a baby. He would also eat from heaps of dung in the street and as a spy, the entire army's rations.