› added 1 month ago

11

TIL Despite having no official relations, Indonesia convertly bought A-4 combat jets from Israel in the 80s and sent pilots and technicans to train how to operate them. The pilots went as far as going to the US to take pictures of themselves at various landmarks for a cover story.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

kJ4Xe TIL that in 1957 the US launched Project Pluto, a plan to design and build a "doomsday" cruise missile (SLAM) that would be nuclear powered and carry multiple hydrogen bombs, spreading radiation along its path from the engine. It was loud enough to kill people in its path with sound.
nZnB TIL that three Klansmen, including an FBI informant, forced a black man to jump to his death from a bridge 150 feet into a river. An Alabama judge dropped the case because “Merely forcing a person to jump from a bridge does not naturally and probably lead to the death of such a person.”
MekQ7 TIL that toxoplasma gondii is a parasite that can alter human behaviour and reaction time causing an increasing in accidents and neurotic behaviour the parasite enters humans via a cat host in which it can sexually reproduce in the gut
DQgje TIL that Mu is mythical lost sunken continent that was hypothesized to once have existed in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, in essence the Pacific's version of Atlantis
6ApZ TIL that Italian doctors have saved the life of a 16-month-old boy by implanting the world’s smallest artificial heart to keep the infant alive until a donor was found for a transplant