› added 7 years ago

140

TIL that Basil Zaharoff sold the Greek government a submarine, then told the Turkish government that the Greeks had a submarine, Turkey then bought 2 submarines. He then told the same to the Russian government who later bought 2 submarines as well. None of the submarines worked.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

v1bKL TIL that it can take up to two years for a banana peel to decompose naturally.
l7X8G TIL there's a "sex for fish" trade in some developing African countries, in which women have transactional sex with fishermen to secure their supply of fish.
5V5Lk TIL that the MTR, Hong Kong's public transit system, has a 99.9% on-time rate, meaning 999 out of 1,000 passengers arrive at their destination within 5 minutes of their scheduled time
GYvOE TIL the famous "Mushroom" red sandstone rock is located in Timna Valley (תִּמְנָע), southern Israel, and the rock formation is a called hoodoo.
kOa7B TIL in 1992, a retiree was out searching for a lost hammer with a metal detector. During his search he found a huge cache of Roman treasure, including 15,234 coins. The British government gave him and the owner of the land £1.75 million for finding it. Later on, he also found the hammer