› added 6 years ago

799

TIL Carl McCunn was flown to the Alaska wilderness to take photos of wildlife. The pilot never returned for him. His friends had a pilot fly out but Carl accidentally gave the signal for “all okay.” He survived for 8 months before killing himself instead of freeze or starve.

V0w8 TIL: Adrian Carton de Wiart fought in the Boer War, World War I & II, was shot in the face, head, stomach, ankle, leg, hip and ear, survived a plane crash, tunneled out of a POW camp, and bit off his own fingers when a doctor wouldn’t amputate them. He later said “frankly I had enjoyed the war.”
4RmN TIL Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon earnings were invested in a floating restaurant, a fudge-making hotel, a computer game, a film nobody saw, a skateboard company, a car hire business, and a children’s shoe factory. All complete failures. They fled to France as tax exiles and recorded The Wall.
xAWw TIL the Oscar nominated documentary “Liberators” narrated by Denzel Washington, interviewing African American soldiers who liberated Buchenwald concentration camp was pulled by PBS when an investigation showed no African American GI’s played a role in the liberation of Buchenwald.
0k41 TIL that in rural Georgia, there are still “Whites Only” school functions, where non-whites are turned away by the police. In 2013, Wilcox County High School will be having its first integrated prom.
6aaw TIL There is an old English unit of volume called a “butt”, approx 477L. There is such a thing as a “butt load”.