› added 1 week ago

10

TIL that in 1809, the Austrian army accidentally attacked itself during the Battle of Wagram. Confused by darkness and miscommunication, one unit mistook another for the enemy — and launched a full-on assault. Over 10,000 men were involved in the chaos.

Read more worldhistory.org

via reddit.com

pn9b TIL that a whiskey company once gave out branding irons as part of a sales promotion, resulting in some customers inevitably requiring emergency surgery.
5YAQP TIL: In 1982 Xerox management watched a film of people struggling to use their new copier and laughed that they must have been grabbed off a loading dock. The people struggling were Ron Kaplan, a computational linguist, and Allen Newell, a founding father of artificial intelligence.
ybyM TIL Stephen Fry was on a tour by the church of latter day saints when the tour guide said ‘in the afterlife all families will be reunited’. He replied 'And what happens if you’ve been good’. He was expelled from the tour.
rR0p1 TIL the 1972 film The Devils was so contreversial that it was banned in Finland for over 40 years until 2011
LQyRZ TIL H.H. Holmes, a 19th-century serial killer, built the "Murder Castle" in Chicago during the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. The hotel had soundproof rooms and hidden passages, allowing Holmes to lure and brutally murder unsuspecting guests, primarily young women.