› added 12 years ago

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TIL there is a company that will orchestrate your own kidnapping, torture and interrogation for money. Just to see how much you can take. You can set up a kidnap-window anywhere around a few days to six weeks. You’re still in control with two special words; the moderator word and the end word.

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OoOl4 TIL microwave ovens DON’T heat food using the “resonant frequency” of water. They work by causing polar molecules (water is one, and so are some fats) to rotate back and forth quickly in an oscillating electromagnetic field, producing molecular vibrations (heat).
QNr0E TIL the The Warriors was X-rated in France in 1979 for incitement to violence, the French Movies Control Board describing the movie as "a very realistic vision of the urban guerrilla warfare that gangs can develop to conquer a city"
GY51E TIL about Gareth Jones, the Welsh reporter who broke the Holodomor story - Russia's secret mass starvation of at least 3.5 million Ukrainians. He was murdered one day before his 30th birthday, most likely by the Soviet NKVD as retaliation for embarrassing the regime.
woKY8 TIL Nazi General Loringhoven was inside the Führerbunker during the last days of Nazi Germany. He attempted to escape, was captured by Allied forces, and later became a NATO commander, retiring as Inspector General of the Armed Forces of West Germany in 1973.
QYlM TIL when Han Solo said he did the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs he was not trying to describe how fast his ship was going. Instead he was bragging that he had done a shorter route of the Kessel Run. He did this by going closer to a black hole than most dared to go.