› added 8 years ago

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TIL in 1996 the IRA planted a bomb in Manchester City centre and told the authorities they had an hour to evacuate the area. The police successfully managed to evacuate 75,000 people in what has been called the most ‘extraordinary policing operations’ in UK history. There wasn’t a single fatality.

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YW8Z TIL George R.R. Martin objected to Vietnam War and was fairly quickly granted conscientious objector status, with the draft board reasoning that being branded a coward for life would be enough punishment for not serving.
4R8J TIL after a Soviet hostage was found dead, KGB agents castrated the nephew of the hostage taker and sent the severed organs as well as a list of other known family members to the hostage taker. The remaining Soviet hostages were quickly released.
e0Yb TIL that Vitamin E doesn’t help heal scars quicker. It actually causes dermatitis up to 33% of the time.
VMLkD TIL Mary Jane Rathbun, better known as Brownie Mary became known for illegally baking and distributing cannabis brownies to AIDs patients in the 1980s. She was baking more than 4000 brownies per week. She was also known for wearing polyester pants suits and having a 'sailors mouth'.
8JJV TIL that a neutron star is so dense that if an object was dropped from one meter above the star’s surface, it would hit the surface at a speed of 7.2 million km per hour