› added 11 years ago

102

TIL that Ray Liotta listened to real FBI recordings of Henry Hill to better suit his role in Goodfellas.

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KYXmB TIL that ulugh beg, the sultan of the timurid empire and grandson of the turco-Mongol conqueror Timur, was an astronomer and mathematician who composed zij-i-sultani of 994 stars, generally considered one of the greatest star catalogues between Ptolemy and Tycho Brahe.
r6vx TIL there is evidence of soldering in Mesopotamia
NlV8 TIL that after Sherlock Holmes was killed off, 20000 people cancelled their subscription to the magazine it was published in and bombarded it and Conan Doyle with abusive mail.
LQbR9 TIL before 2001, on 9/11 four aircraft crashes and 1 disappearance happened in different years, resulting in 221 deaths and 16 missing combined
JYLr8 TIL the way Helsinki survived WW2. In 1944 the USSR began a massive air attack on the city to force Finland to leave the war. Finns used fires and searchlights to trick Soviet bombers into dropping bombs outside the city. Russian diplomats were surprised to find an intact Helsinki after the war.