› added 9 years ago

142

TIL the farthest distance into space humans have traveled was reached during the Apollo 13 emergency.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

P1Qjn TIL that Pythagoras was not the first in record to come up with the idea that the Earth is round due to the shape of the moon. It is not known if Pythagoras actually said this. This is a clerical error made by Thomas Heath in 1915, and has been perpetuated by BBC, NASA and Encyclopedia Britannica.
lxmN TIL that Winston Churchill drew up plans for a surprise attack against the then-allied Soviet Union. Dubbed “Operation Unthinkable,” the plan would have rearmed up to 100,000 former Nazi soldiers and kicked off World War 3 almost before World War 2 had ended.
ADlGo TIL that up until 1962, women were not allowed to attend the White House Correspondents' Dinner. At the urging of Helen Thomas, John F. Kennedy refused to attend until the ban was lifted. Helen Thomas was named president of the White house Correspondents' Association thirteen years later.
6EgMW TIL there is an Asian Elephant sanctuary in Thailand for elephants that have been subject to cruelty by bad owners. Some are driven to exhaustion when used for logging, others are tortured to subdue them to become tame for tourist rides.
NoMP TIL in 1965 a young American tourist illegally crossed the Norwegian-Soviet border, walked up to a Soviet border post and demanded the guards stamp his passport. He was arrested, sentenced to a detention camp and died on the train there.