› added 10 years ago

76

TIL a Japanese Oil Tanker captain fell into a cactus at a Santa Barbra Oil Field, provoking laughter from the local workers. 5 years later he returned in an Imperial Japanese Navy sub and made the first mainland shelling of the US at that oil field.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

PYnQO TIL On October 23, 1983, two truck bombs struck buildings in Beirut, housing American and French service members of a peacekeeping operation during the Lebanese Civil War. The attack killed 307 people. The attacks eventually led to the withdrawal of the international peacekeeping force from Lebanon.
eRa5 TIL Muhammad Ali called Michael J. Fox after his Parkinson’s diagnosis and said, “Now that you’re in the fight, we’ll win.”
gMEWX TIL Operation Midnight Climax was established in order to study the effects of LSD. Sex workers on the CIA payroll were instructed to lure clients back to the safehouses, where they were given LSD and studied through a one way glass to see if this could help the CIA's mind-control research program.
V8E0 TIL on May 1, 1969, Mr. Rogers addressed the Senate to argue that $20 million in funding for PBS should not be cut. Sen John Pastore led the hearing and had never heard of Mr. Rogers’ television show. It took just six minutes to convince the Senator from RI that the $20 million was well worth it.
m1lBo TIL One of the main struggles for Alexander Graham Bell and his team was to prove to non-English speakers that this new phenomenon "worked in their language." It was a concept that was hard for people to understand at first