› added 11 years ago

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TIL a USMC General and Medal of Honor recipient wrote a bestselling book describing how wars exist to enrich corporations. In 1935.

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M7wlW TIL about Dr. Mike Bingham, a conservationist who was fired for reporting an 80% penguin decline. He was harassed by the government, sued them for human rights abuses, and won in the Supreme Court.
R7jyQ TIL that in south London in 1864, Thomas Webster Rammell built an atmospheric railway for passenger transportation, called Crystal Palace Pneumatic Railway, that went around 39.6 km/h (24.6 mph) through a 2.7x3m tunnel just by varying the air pressure in the tunnel before/behind the railway wagon.
BXLx TIL that the first woman to earn a PhD in Computer Science in the United States also earned a Masters degree in Mathematics and Physics, helped develop computer programming languages, AND she was a Catholic nun.
pYJO8 TIL Sun Yat-sen's translator Dai Jitao had a son from an affair who he gave to Chiang Kai-shek for adoption to avoid scandal. The son, christened Chiang Wei-kuo, later led a Panzer division during Anschluss. He was called home to China to fight the Japanese just before Germany invaded Poland.
b9eVZ TIL that Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, participated in a psychological study as a teenager. Subjects had their beliefs attacked by a "personally abusive" attorney. Their faces were recorded, and their expressions of rage were played back to them repeatedly. Kaczynski logged 200 hours in the study.