› added 5 years ago

169

TIL About Britain's "Anthrax Island," an island used for testing a single anthrax germ bomb by the UK in WW2. It was determined an anthrax bomb could render cities uninhabitable for generations. Quarantined for decades, the island was declared inhabitable again after a cleanup effort in 1986.

b9vYN TIL in the 1970’s a man in his mid-30’s committed suicide by jumping off the Gold Gate Bridge. The suicide note that he left behind in his apartment wrote “I’m going to walk to the bridge. If one person smiles at me on the way, I will not jump.”
GYR91 TIL that Rock and Roll Hall of Fame paid $6,000 for the preservation of Lady Gaga's meat dress which included treatment with bleach, formaldehyde and detergent to kill any bacteria which had formed during the time before it was frozen.
lo0WV TIL about the HMS "Black Joke" a brazillion slave ship that was captured by British Admiralty and repurposed to hunt slave ships. Over it's five year career it is believed to have freed hundreds of slaves after its renaming from "Henriquetta"
OZ6e TIL in 1833 a meteor shower occurred that was so intense that “the frequency of meteors was estimated to be about half that of flakes of snow in an average snowstorm.”
Z8ywv TIL of Sybil Ludington—a 16-year-old revolutionary who rode twice the distance Paul Revere did in 1777 to warn people of a British invasion. She navigated 40 miles of rainy terrain at night while avoiding British loyalists and ended up completing her mission before dawn the next day.