› added 9 years ago

239

TIL Kublia Khan’s niece Khutulun insisted that any man who wished to marry her must defeat her in wrestling and forfeit horses to her if they lost. She gained 10,000 horses defeating prospective suitors.

Read more wikipedia.org

via ift.tt

mxQxo TIL that 9/11 is the anniversary of the 1973 coup d'état in Chile led by General Pinochet, who executed thousands and interned and tortured tens of thousands for 17 years. While the U.S. may not have directly backed the coup, it appeared to condone it and worked with Pinochet afterwards.
Z8l0D TIL that in 1987 during the development of "Smooth Criminal" Dr. Eric Chevlen recorded Michael Jackson's heartbeat and digitally processed it through a Synclavier, which would become the heartbeat you hear at the beginning of the song.
xVam1 TIL that George Washington illegally rotated his enslaved personal chef, Hercules, between the Capitol and Mount Vernon to avoid laws that would free him. Hercules eventually escaped to freedom.
R7VKl TIL about Marion Stokes, a Philadelphia woman who began taping whatever was on television in 1979 and didn't stop until her death in 2012.. The 71,000 VHS and Betamax tapes she made are the most complete collection preserving this era of TV. They are being digitized by the Internet Archive.
nePvb TIL During Operation Ivy Bells (wire tapping Soviet underwater communication lines) the USS Seawolf (SSN-575) was almost lost during one of the missions—she was stranded on the bottom after a storm and almost had to use her self-destruct charges to scuttle the ship with her crew.