› added 11 years ago

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TIL A Party conference in Soviet Moscow ended with a tribute to Stalin. Nobody wanted to be the first to stop clapping. After 11 minutes of clapping a factory director stopped first and everybody else followed. That night he was sent to a gulag for 10 years.

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JYVrV TIL that many US military officials, even war hawks such as Douglas MacArthur and several fleet admirals, opposed the usage of atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki as unnecessary and cruel. Curtis LeMay even went as far as to say "The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all."
pXYp TIL of Moe Berg, a professional baseball player who served as a spy for the U.S. during WWII. He attended a lecture by Werner Heisenberg under the orders to shoot Heisenberg if he made any indication that the Germans were close to making an atomic bomb.
OK6Y TIL in 1954 while riding a rocket sled John Stapp voluntarily submitted himself to 46.2 g and survived
QJor9 TIL that there is a beetle and a spider named after Leonardo DiCaprio to acknowledge his work in promoting environmental awareness
X0gBr TIL that there were only 45 days separating the events of 9/11/01 and the passing of the US Patriot Act