› added 6 years ago

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TIL Australian speed skater Steven Bradbury won a gold medal in the 2002 winter olympics as his entire competition crashed out in the finals

Read more bbc.co.uk

via reddit.com

X05br TIL Grass Allergy can make you food intolerant to tomatoes when it's grass pollen season
QJ8xd TIL in the Halloween film "Hocus Pocus," Billy Bucherson coughed up real life moths. He was fitted with a mouth piece, which consisted of a latex pouch that held the dirt and moths.
LQrNr TIL an 1858 heatwave caused the River Thames to reek unbearably due to raw sewage dumping. The stench was so intense that Parliament ended sessions early, and curtains were soaked in chloride to mask the smell. This was the tipping point that finally pushed London to build a modern sewer system.
ADElB TIL Canadians in WW1 regularly executed prisoners and exploited truces. "[He] described the practice of lobbing tins of corned beef into a neighbouring German trench. When the Canadians started hearing happy shouts of “More! Give us more!” they then let loose with an armload of grenades."
JYYYj TIL Microsoft installed a backdoor in Skype to allow Chinese, Russian and United States law enforcement agencies to eavesdrop on Skype conversations, as well as have access to Skype users’ geographic locations after they purchased Skype in 2011 for the law enforcement agencies around the world.