› added 4 years ago

395

TIL about Banjawarn station in Western Australia, once owned by the Japanese cult responsible for the 1995 sarin subway attacks. They used the extremely remote property to experiment with chemical weapons and due to an unexplained seismic event some believe they detonated a nuclear bomb.

Read more vice.com

via reddit.com

oBagE TIL the the 1960s was the heyday for the Quicksand trope - almost 3% of films showed characters sinking in clay, mud, or sand.
nedJB TIL The 1997 experiment at Fermilab which confirmed the existence of the tau neutrino was called DONUT (Direct observation of the nu tau)
X1nP TIL that the National Zoo has a suspended wire system to allow orangutans to travel between buildings. there’s a chance of being pooped on.
D1evD TIL to combat the spread of smallpox during the Civil War, soldiers would find someone with cowpox, cut open their pustules, and infect themselves with it. The less harmful cowpox made them immune to smallpox, but they sometimes confused cowpox with syphilis and gave themselves an STD instead.
e0PV4 TIL about an Indian maharaja who legally adopted 1000 Ukrainian children orphaned by WW2. He took them to India, kept them safe and brought in Ukrainian teachers to educate them, all using his own money.