› added 11 years ago

103

TIL that Kim Jong-Il’s eldest son, Kim Jong-nam, was wideley consider to be the heir apparent to the title of Supreme Leader of North Korea until he attempted to enter Japan with a fake passport so that he could go to Disneyland

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

QNQ9a TIL in 1930 a 11,000-Ton Telephone Exchange Building Was Moved Without Suspending Its Operations
0dvVN TIL of the HMS Royal George, the largest warship in the world at the time of her launch in 1756. Her sinking near Portsmouth killed more than 800 people, making it one of the most deadly maritime disasters in British territorial waters. Many who died were women and children, visiting family onboard.
PYw8G TIL in the 1950s the US Navy sprayed San Francisco with a bacteria known to leave 'pink slime' residue in damp environments like bathrooms and now known to cause UTIs and pneumonia, in order to test the impact of an offshore biological weapons attack on a coastal city
APVB TIL Nike made a commercial depicting a Samburu tribesman saying “Just Do it” in his native language. An American anthropologist called them out. The spoken phrase actually meant, “I don’t want these, give me big shoes.” Nike’s response: “We thought nobody in America would know what he said.”
yQEgp TIL that Caesar’s last words to Brutus (‘Kai su, teknon’, literally ‘You too, child’) may have been intended along the lines of ‘See you in hell, punk’, rather than as an expression of shock at being stabbed by one he had treated like a son, because the words ‘kai su’ often appear on curse tablets.