› added 2 years ago

161

TIL that Kevin Spacey has had over 15 people accuse him of sexual misconduct, and 3 of those people died before they could testify or advance their case against him, which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it's happened three times

L8x0 TIL multiple case reports exist of adolescents injecting themselves with elemental mercury after having seen X-Men Origins: Wolverine and incorrectly believing they can convert their bones to metal by injecting themselves with liquid metal.
9Y66m TIL former Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas claimed that people acting on the orders of President Richard Nixon were trying to plant marijuana in his yard so that they could stage a televised raid and force him to retire from the court, with his replacement appointed by Nixon.
kOO6m TIL the use of the word “scoop” in the context of news stories started with fisherman scooping water sealed boxes (full of news) out of the ocean and delivering them to land before wired transatlantic communications negated the need to do so.
4XmyN TIL Santa Fe, New Mexico is the oldest state capital in the US & its full name remains La Villa Real de la Santa Fe de San Francisco de Asís which means "The Royal Town of the Holy Faith of Saint Francis of Assisi" in English.
rr01 TIL that astrophysicist Carl Sagan and his wife would smuggle books about the history of the Russian Revolution into the USSR so that their colleagues could read them, since recorded history lessons in Russia were actively manipulated by Joseph Stalin at the time.