› added 8 years ago

108

TIL a commando unit of 12 men sabotaged a heavy water plant in Norway in WWII, crippling Nazi attempts at developing an atomic bomb.

Read more hydro.com

via ift.tt

YpQ6d TIL that donut holes were invented by a 16 yr old sailor named Hanson Gregory. Gregory was tired of eating greasy and undercooked donuts with raw dough on the insides, so he decided to make donuts but with holes in them.
16XwP TIL in 1982 ecological activist Chaïm Nissim fired five RPG-7 rockets into the Superphénix nuclear reactor in France as protest of its construction. He was never caught, only revealing his involvement 21 years later, calling the attack "non-violent" and "quite beautiful".
M74r8 TIL that Barents Sea was blocked by ice in 16th century
rRlY1 TIL Part of the same first Chernobyl firefighter crew was sent to Kiev where the doctors dared using different method of bone marrow transplantation. While in Moscow 11 of 13 firefighters died within a week, in Kiev all 11 of 11 survived.
YpWwB TIL actor Paul Giamatti’s father Angelo Giamatti was a Yale University professor and then Yale University president. He was also the 7th (and shortest-tenured) commissioner of the MLB, dying of a heart attack at 51