› added 6 years ago

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TIL according to Timothy Leary, Mary Pinchot Meyer, who was romantically linked to JFK, took part in a plan to avert worldwide nuclear war by convincing powerful male members of the Washington establishment to take LSD, which would presumably lead them to conclude that the Cold War was meaningless

j6xVN TIL: That the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission had planned to carve out an artificial harbor in Northern Alaska using buried nuclear explosions. The plan (Project Chariot) had a lot of public support and would have been carried out if the Inupiat village of Point Hope hadn't strongly opposed it.
QW7L TIL a mother cow in a US dairy farm made a “Sophie’s Choice” - she hid 1 of her newly born twins and let the farmer took away the 2nd one in the hope of saving at least one of her babies. Both babies were slaughtered.
6EDJQ TIL that Japan had no intention of surrendering after the nukes were dropped until emperor Hirohito stepped in. This made some generals so mad that they tried to stage a coup to overthrow the emperor to keep the war going.
nw8P TIL Lewis Lee Millett deserted the US Army when he thought they would not enter WW2 and joined the Canadian Army to fight. After the US Army joined WW2 he transferred back. In the Korean war he would be awarded the Medal Of Honor for leading the last major bayonet charge in American history.
RWj8 TIL that in 2009, during a bar fight in Dublin, a man had his hand cut off with a samurai sword. He proceeded to punch his attacker in the face with the stump.