› added 5 years ago

271

TIL Bath Abbey church in England had up to an estimated 6,000 people buried under it which caused voids to form and put the church floors in danger of collapse. A church rep said "they just jammed them in and jammed them in — it would have been very unpleasant to put it mildly."

Read more theverge.com

via reddit.com

jNMGQ TIL in 1981 members of a U.S. nuclear semiotics team believed if the world ended, survivors 10,000 years in the future might not know what the radiation symbol means. So they proposed breeding bioluminescent cats that would glow when they came near radiation to serve as living indicators of danger.
yLWw TIL NBC’s Dateline aired a segment showing gas tanks on General Motors pickup trucks tended to explode on even low-speed impacts. G.M. responded with an investigation showing that Dateline had rigged explosions in the show by affixing model-rocket engines to a truck’s underbody.
W7Q78 Til of E Henry Knoche, A former star college tennis and basketball athlete, he asked for a job with the CIA with no qualifications other than his trophies, 2 years with the navy during WW2 and speaking Russian and an obscure Chinese dialect. When he retired in 1977 he was acting director of the CIA
4koww TIL local Cretan resistance in WWII was so great that civilians would attack Axis paratroopers as they were landing with knives, axes, scythes and even their bare hands.
6W48 Today I learned that no-one is producing antivenom for North Americas most venomous snake, because it isn’t profitable.