› added 10 years ago

219

TIL: Roald Dahl was a spy. He seduced American women for Britain, sometimes begging to be freed from assignments because some of the married women were too “frisky”. That was before he wrote “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”.

Read more mentalfloss.com

via reddit.com

oBPlr TIL, not only are eggplants fruits, they're technically classified as a berry
0wx1v TIL that one of the top security experts at the FBI, Frank Abagnale, was also one of the most successful con-mans of all time. He posed as a pilot to travel for free on over 250 flights to 25 countries aged between 16-18, and had scammed his father out of $28k (adjusted for inflation) aged just 15.
6Eo48 TIL that alternative rock band Radiohead created companies with ludicrous names such as "Random Rubbish LTD" and "LLLP LLP" to deal with music income.
ANNko TIL Scientists at the Parkes radio telescope in Australia spent 17 years trying to identify powerful but extremely short radio bursts that would appear at seemingly random intervals. In 2015 they finally identified the cause: a microwave oven at the facility being opened prematurely.
V7eZ TIL Sir Hugh Beaver, of the Guinness Breweries, got into an argument over which was the fastest game bird in Europe. There was no book in the world with which to settle arguments about records and questions debated nightly in pubs throughout Ireland. Guinness World Records was born.