› added 3 months ago

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TIL about the Duquesne spy ring, the largest espionage case in US history that ended in convictions, where 33 members of a nazi german espionage network were sentenced to a total of over 300 years in prison. They were lead by a man who had advised Theodore Roosevelt on big-game hunting.

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via reddit.com

R5NoQ TIL about Capitol Hill's mystery soda machine. Operating from around the early 1990s to 2018, this machine would dispense rare discontinued beverages. Supposedly the nearby businesses had no idea who was restocking the machine. After the machine disappeared a note was left saying "Went for a walk".
8rwG TIL that for Easter in the Czech Republic, men use braided willows to whip women’s buttocks. Said women then thank the men for ensuring their beauty and vitality, and reward them with chocolate or a shot of plum brandy.
4056 TIL Vin Diesel named his newborn daughter “Pauline” after the late Paul Walker.
4K7w TIL that Anthony Lane, a film critic for the New Yorker, once began reviewing ‘Contact’ (1997) and noted it “v. gloomy,” “odd noir look for sci-fi,” “creepy shadows in outdoor scene,” before realizing he had forgotten to take off his sunglasses.
ne6R7 TIL A bad grape harvest in 1985 led to Austrian wine producers adding antifreeze to their wines in order to lessen the sour taste, collapsing the Austrian wine market.