› added 13 years ago

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TIL that the more than 100,000 people working on the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge Tennessee in the 1940s had no idea what they were working on. It wasn’t until the local newspaper printed the bombing of Hiroshima were the workers told what they had been working on for the last several years.

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KOQyw TIL the U.S. put Italian-Americans in an internment camp in Montana during WWII as a result of Executive Order 9066
0wKy1 TIL of Mariya Tsukanova, a Soviet medic during WW2. She saved dozens of lives, and took up a machine gun, firing until she lost consciousness from injuries. Being outnumbered, she was brutally tortured and executed by the Japanese and killed. She was named "Hero of the Soviet Union." posthumously.
OG9GR TIL during the period aptly named as "the great dying" 57% of biological families on earth, uncluding 81% of marine life and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate went extinct. The likely cause is volcanic activity turned the oceans toxic and released toxic gas like sulfuric dioxide into the air
gMg4D TIL after the horrific murder, beheading, and cannibalization of a Greyhound passenger in 2008 the company had to pull their advertising campaign which extolled the relaxing upside of bus travel and stated, "There's a reason you've never heard of bus rage".
yRnv TIL of Menachem Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Thousands of visitors would line up each Sunday for a brief word of advice or blessing from him. He would give each person a dollar to give to charity, because of his grandfather’s belief that when two people meet, it should benefit a third".