› added 2 months ago

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TIL that future British Prime Minister Anthony Eden carried a letter bomb in his suitcase for a whole day, thinking it was a Whitehall pamphlet that he would read later in the day. He only realized it was a bomb after being warned by the police, who were informed by MI5.

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p8PJe TIL one of Canada's most dynastic families are the Irving's. They are considered to be the most influential, owning somewhere between 200 and 300 corporations and being the fifth-largest private landholders in the United States.
wR11 TIL Philadelphia has a section of railway, home to a heroin epidemic so bad, that even the police have trouble going there due to the horrible conditions.
ayLo TIL People with poor mathematical skills aren’t necessarily bad at math because they are ‘ungifted’. There is a phenomena called 'Math Anxiety’ that makes people perform worse, which sometimes leads to math avoidance, which leads to lesser knowledge and consequently more Math anxiety.
dYJQ TIL that the pilot episode of an offshoot of The X-Files called The Lone Gunmen featured its heroes racing to stop a plane getting hijacked by govt agents and flown into the World Trade Center to increase defense spending while blaming foreign enemies. Aired 6 months before 9/11.
GAZnJ TIL the Battle of Xiangji Temple during the An Lushan rebellion of China had one of the highest casualty counts for any one-day battle. About 130000 soldiers died, despite the battle having occurred in 757 CE.