› added 10 years ago

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TIL two men were brought up on federal hacking charges when they exploited a bug in video poker machines and won half a million dollars. His lawyer argued, “All these guys did is simply push a sequence of buttons that they were legally entitled to push.” The case was dismissed.

1aJr7 TIL in the 1960s, two doctors made a taxidermy female turkey to see what attracted a male. They discovered almost nothing stopped the male’s advances, even when the female’s wings, feet, and legs were removed. The male even made attempts to a stick with female’s head on it.
LQ6BQ TIL Of the letters of last resort. Each UK nuclear submarine has a safe which contains a letter written by the Prime Minister, with instructions on what to do in the case of nuclear war. They're only to be opened when the UK has been hit by nuclear weapons.
bVy7 TIL In Norway there is a fortress called Akershus. It is believed that whoever controls Akershus also rules over Norway. However the fortress has survived every siege in the last 700 years.
yJrM TIL when Louis the XIV of France was shown a new map of his country, which had been freshly surveyed by astronomers using more accurate methods, he saw that France had shrunk by 20 percent. He is said to have exclaimed, “I have just lost more territory to my astronomers than to all my enemies!”
WkJ6L TIL Agatha Christie wrote a novel in 1941 about World War 2 codebreaking featuring a character named Major Bletchley. Due to this, she was investigated by MI5, but the naming turned out to be coincidental and unrelated to the then secret codebreaking in Bletchley Park.