› added 7 years ago

105

TIL that Elie Wiesel, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and author of the Holocaust memoir “Night”, started the Elie Wiesel Foundation For Humanity. The charity lost nearly $16 million in the Madoff Ponzi Scheme. Wiesel and his wife also lost their entire personal life savings.

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VM85G TIL In 1967 Michael J. Adams (Maj USAF) flew an X-15 to an altitude above 50 miles and qualified as an astronaut according to the U.S. definition of the boundary of space. Moments later the craft broke apart, killing Adams and destroying the X-15-3. He was the first American space mission fatality.
v5or TIL The King of Thailand was born a Citizen of the United States
4karN TIL Napoléon shipped more than 800,000 pints of wine during his Egyptian Campaign.
Q8G9 TIL that Oscar Wilde’s tomb was encased in glass in 2011, rendering it “kiss proof” after many lipsticked visitors left their marks.
1XoX TIL in 2007, a Bowhead whale was discovered with the end of a harpoon left embedded in its neck from a previous hunt. It was found that the harpoon tip was originally manufactured in 1890, indicating the whale had survived a human attack more than a century ago.