› added 1 month ago

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TIL of John O’Niell who followed Osama Bin Laden while at the FBI said “we’re due for something big” the night before dying in the World Trade Center on Sept 11, 2001, where he worked as the head of security since Aug 2001.

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yQa9M TIL: Because of the Pearl Harbor attack, 3 sailors suffered being trapped in their submarine for 16 DAYS before they died
5MVR TIL water rights in Bolivia were privatized and sold to a foreign corporation in 1999. Water rates increased 35% to about $20 a month. Many of the new clients only earned about $100 a month, and this was more than they spent on food.
8ajDX TIL that the last surviving wife of a Civil War veteran died just 6 months ago. They married in 1936 while she was 17 and he was 93. This practice was common so that young women could receive the veteran's Civil War pension ($73.13/month). She died in December 2020 at the age of 101.
E1BbP TIL the company that produces the Jenga game initially wanted to change its name to "Timber!" or "Tumbling". This is because it didn't indicate how the game was played and people wouldn't know what it meant. The original creator refused because she thought the name would gain meaning later on.
1a5Nr TIL the reason we know what cyanide tastes like is because an Indian man, MP Prasad who committed suicide left a hastily scrawled note describing the taste. "Doctors, potassium cyanide. I have tasted it. It burns the tongue and tastes acrid," he wrote, solving a long unanswered question.