› added 11 years ago

95

TIL A 26yr old pretending to be a CIA agent convinced people to try to rob banks.

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Me7DB On July 14th, the New Horizons spacecraft will make history when it sails past Pluto, formerly known as the ninth planet. Even more incredible is how fast we got there. The spacecraft traveled 3 billion miles in nine and a half years. That’s about a million miles a day for almost ten years. How the heck did we do it?
d8Mjr TIL Camels do not store water in their humps. The humps are actually reservoirs for fatty tissue. Concentrating fat in their humps minimizes insulation throughout the rest of the body, thus allowing camels to survive in such extreme hot regions.
neWa7 TIL that during the Black Plague, the Jewish community had a lower infection risk than other populations. Among the theories, they suggest that Jewish religious practices promoted better health since so many rituals relate to hygiene. It resulted in the Jews being accused of causing the Black Death.
loXrK TIL that Felix Salten, author of one of the most notorious and depraved works of erotic fiction in world literature ("Josefine Mutzenbacher") also wrote the book on which Disney's "Bambi" is based.
E16BW TIL that during the siege of Leningrad, Hitler had no intentions of actually invading the city. He did not want to capture and feed the 3 million inhabitants and ordered an unending siege, disregarding possible surrender, waiting for the city to starve to death. Close to a million civilians starved.