› added 4 years ago

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TIL - CIA revealed a "heart attack" gun in 1975. A battery operated gun which fired a dart of frozen water & shellfish toxin. Once inside the body it would melt leaving only a small red mark on the victim where it entered. The official cause of death would always be a heart attack.

4X7k6 TIL that a 61yo Californian man Gregory McFadden after suffering for more than a decade with a medical condition that rendered him unable to sleep and eat properly decided to commit suicide by jumping off a helicopter mid-flight. However, he survived the jump and later died at the hospital.
W4R4 TIL because they make over 300 million small rubber tires each year, LEGO is considered the world’s # 1 tire manufacturer
MPpm TIL that soldiers use Silly String in Iraq for bomb detection. It travels far enough where a soldier can shoot it across most rooms, and it’s light enough such that if some Silly String lands on the tripwire, it won’t cause the bomb to explode.
epZ1g TIL Wisconsin produces over half of all cranberries in the world. 5% is sold fresh: majority is for sauce, juice, dried fruit, etc. Settlers called the fruit “crane berry” cause the blossoms resemble the head of a Sandhill crane. It takes about 4,400 cranberries to make 1 gallon of juice.
woGvM TIL that Audrey Hepburn declined the offer from Otto Frank to play his daughter, Anne, in the 1959 film adaptation of The Diary of Anne Frank. Audrey declined, because she did not want to relive her wartime experiences in German occupied Holland.