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TIL Nixon and Kissinger funded the kidnapping/assassination of a Chilean General who wanted to prevent civil war. CIA provided one of the conspirators with a life-insurance policy and “hush money”, while another received guns, ammunition and $50,000 in cash to carry out the plot.

Read more theguardian.com

via reddit.com

GYXpE TIL: 14-year-old Roman Emperor Elagabalus was a cross-dressing, sex-obsessed torture fiend who may have invented the whoopee cushion. He loosed venomous snakes into gladiatorial crowds and released his pet lions and leopards into banquet halls or the bed chambers of his guests.
kJGQB TIL of Cape Disappointment in South Georgia, discovered by an expedition led by Captain Cook who named it so after realizing that he had discovered an island and not a continent
5Y07D TIL after being called out on local TV, 2 porch pirates caught on camera returned a package of replica WWE belts (belonging to a 5-yr-old autistic boy with a brain tumor) with a note that read: “After seeing ourselves looking like low lives on the news, we have both decided to get clean and sober.”
WkPYB TIL it has been established so far that 928 prisoners attempted to escape from the Auschwitz concentration camp complex (878 men and 50 women). For 196 prisoners the escape finished with success and the majority of them lived to see the end of the war.
grKy7 TIL that a type of Japanese water beetle can, when eaten by a frog, swim through the frog's digestive tract and escape through its anus