› added 1 month ago

7

TIL that on average, 1,300 trains derail every year in the US, with a peak of 9,400 derailments in 1978.

Read more usafacts.org

via reddit.com

0wx95 TIL that when Patton invaded Germany, Marlene Dietrich accompanied him. When asked why she would be at the front lines, she replied "out of decency". Billy Wilder noted she was at the front more often than Eisenhower.
bxr9 TIL: The Navajo code is the only spoken military code never to have been deciphered. During WWII, since only 30 non-Navajo people could understand Navajo, the US used Navajos as code talkers. They could encode, transmit, and decode a three-line message in 20 seconds, versus 30 minutes for machines.
k7e7 TIL from 2011 to 2013, a hacker group repeatedly broke into Microsoft’s computer network: Using stolen credentials, they even were able to walk into Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond. Walking out again, they took three unreleased Xbox One dev kits with them.
9YmLp TIL that in 1988, the CIA paid $2 MM to Chad in order to extract an advanced Soviet attack helicopter (Mi-25) from an abandoned Libyan air base using two MH-47 Chinook transport helicopters, flying a total of 500 miles under the cover of night
K4ya TIL The bottom 5% of the population in USA is richer than 68% of the world population