› added 6 years ago

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TIL A train company invented a way to ship oil without pipelines; bitumen is converted into a solid product and sealed in plastic made from recyclables. The pucks are designed to be transported in regular container cars by train and loaded onto cargo ships at coal terminals. They float too!

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rXv1 TIL Gin and Tonic were originally created by the British East India Company as a way to get soldiers to have quinine to prevent and treat malaria. Quinine (in tonic) was too bitter. In order to get them to drink the tonic officers added the solders’ gin rations with sugar, lime and water.
6E8PZ TIL in the summer of 2011, authorities were finally able to create a DNA profile of notorious serial killer Ted Bundy and upload it to the FBI’s national database when vials of his blood, taken in 1978, were discovered previously untouched and forgotten in a Florida crime lab
Y70od TIL Sparrow Force, a mostly Australian WW 2 unit, was stranded for 10 months on a Japanese-held island, fighting against 100-to-1 odds, with no radio for most of that time. A radio was improvised & sent, “Force intact. Still fighting. Badly need boots, quinine, money, and Tommy-gun ammunition.”
m1pdY TIL how a bad thing turned out good. A story about Vince D. Donile a Blue Angel pilot in 1969
8yXa TIL that in 1967 British philosopher Bertrand Russell organized an international war crimes tribunal that unanimously concluded the U.S Government was guilty of genocide against the people of Vietnam.