› added 6 years ago

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TIL that the Soviet secret police required that all domestic maps were intentionally faked/distorted and accurate maps were classified until the 1990’s.

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kO5A1 TIL that around Christmas of 1987, Ronald Gene Simmons murdered 16 people, 14 of which included his family. Months prior to his spree, he instructed his children to dig trenches that he later used to place his family in after their deaths. He turned himself in and never appealed his death sentence.
mxGRo TIL: Heraclitus, a pre-Socratic philosopher, deposited his book in the Artemisium which was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
OoJPe TIL Yuri Gagarin scared farmers by landing in a spacesuit. A woman asked, "Can it be that you have come from outer space?" Gagarin said: "As a matter of fact, I have! Don't be afraid, I am a Soviet like you, who has descended from space and I must find a telephone to call Moscow!"
k9aE TIL Gary Burghoff (who played Radar on MASH) has a deformed left hand. He hid it throughout his entire run on the series because it would have made Radar unfit for military duty. (pic in comments)
e6Z4 TIL Socrates taught Plato, Plato taught Aristotle, then Aristotle taught Alexander the Great.