› added 10 years ago

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TIL that after the highest-ranking defector from the Eastern Bloc, a 3-star general in the secret police of Romania, arrived in US, a bounty of 2 mil was placed on him. Yasser Arafat and Muammar al-Gaddafi set a 1 mil reward each. Additionally, Carlos the Jackal was hired. Gen. Pacepa still lives.

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xoO5 TIL that the first Allied shots of both world wars were fired from the same gun
DkJY TIL Robert F. Kennedy attended nearly a dozen schools and failed the third grade.
xGVg TIL that in the 1854 New York World’s Fair, Elisha Otis amazed a crowd when he ordered the only rope holding the platform on which he was standing cut. The rope was severed by an axeman, and the platform fell only a few inches before coming to a halt and the elevator industry was on its way.
9Y1j7 TIL Of the SS Richard Montgomery, a sunken WW2 cargo ship carrying the equivalent of 1500 tons of TNT. If it explodes, it will generate a 5 meter tsunami, destroying coastal Kent.
QNdJM TIL: Carl Sagan originally wanted to include the Beatles' Here Comes the Sun on the record on the spacecraft Voyager but the record company EMI declined