› added 11 years ago

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TIL An al-Qaeda bomber attempted an assassination by cramming one pound of plastic explosives in his ass and blowing himself up. He managed to only kill himself.

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GA9nQ TIL of Beer's law, which describes how light attenuates when traveling through a liquid. Named after a German physicist, the property was actually originally observed by a Frenchman looking at wine.
0BJR TIL that when 16 year old John Paul Getty III was kidnapped in 1973, his billionaire grandfather refused to pay $17 million ransom. After the kidnappers mailed Getty’s ear to a newspaper, his grandfather only agreed to pay $2.2 million because that was the maximum amount that was tax deductible.
DQY8D TIL about the SS Île de France, the last civilian ship to leave France before the outbreak of WWII. It successfully transported 1,777 passengers fleeing from France to New York; while crossing the Atlantic, 16 other vessels were sunk by torpedoes, mines, or gunfire.
bYlQ TIL of Shavarsh Karapetyan who was a 17-time world champion finswimmer and heard that a bus crashed in the water. He went in the deep water and rescued 20 people from drowning. After 10 years he rescued more people from a burning hospital. He also carried the torch in the Winter Olympics of 2014.
8eJvX TIL At age 19, future President Lyndon Johnson secured a job teaching elementary school to impoverished Mexican-American students in 1928. Within three months, Lyndon developed various programs including contests in spelling and public speaking, coaching sports