› added 9 years ago

1653

TIL Matt DeHart, hacker associated with Anonymous, discovered that the CIA played a role in the 2001 anthrax attacks. After he released this information, the CIA and FBI put warrants out for his arrest, illegally detained him, tortured him, charged him with possessing Child Pornography.

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n567 TIL while coming up with the character Aragorn, Tolkien initially conceptualized him as a Hobbit with wooden shoes, named “Trotter”. He would later be revealed to be Bilbo Baggins himself and the wooden shoes would turn out to be wooden feet as he was previously tortured by Sauron in Mordor.
rNd8e Today I learned that George Washington was not the first President, in fact he was technically the 8th
5YMA9 TIL that the Unification Church (aka 'The Moonies') supplies most of the sushi restaurants in the United States
mxvZR TIL in Germany in 1938, while searching for a water source for a town, workers found an ancient spring feed line to a Roman aqueduct which had supplied Cologne 60 miles away. The feed was simply connected into the modern water network. To avoid damage to the spring no archaeological work was done.
m1rWY TIL that Phillip Morris, namesake of the company that sells Marlboro, died of lung cancer at 38.