› added 5 years ago

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TIL about Dennis Dickey, a US Border agent who, as part of a gender reveal party, shot at a box which was packed with explosives. When hit, it emitted a cloud of blue smoke, but also set fire to the surrounding bush, destroying almost 45,000 acres of land. Dickey was ordered to pay $8m restitution.

Read more time.com

via reddit.com

5Vwrn TIL of Jan Palach, He was a student at Prague University in January 1969 when he self-immolated in protest of the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. 26 other self-immolations were made and Jan became an icon of Czech freedom and eventually a national hero after the Velvet Revolution
b1NN TIL that the guy who got Pluto not to be a planet anymore wrote a book called “How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming”. He is also behind the discovery of the new Ninth planet.
ADmyw TIL that in 1910 moose were introduced to a remote part of New Zealand known as Fiordland. They are believed to have mostly died out, but to this day, traces of a mysterious moose presence are occasionally still found in the region. The moose themselves however haven't been seen since 1952.
XEKME TIL the first huge ammonium nitrate disaster happened 104 years before the Beirut explosion in Faversham, Kent, UK, but was hushed up by authorities during the first world war. 108 people lost their lives and many more were injured.
94RB TIL that cheetahs were almost wiped out by the last ice-age, and all modern cheetahs are descended from a small portion of the surviving cats that interbred to maintain their species. Because of this, cheetahs are practically genetic clones of one another.