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TIL in 2009 a couple from UK started a facebook campaign to make Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing in the Name” the #1 Christmas single. The song sold 500,000 copies beating the 4 year run of X-factor winners. All proceeds went to homeless charities. More in comments.

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kJWNd TIL Texas didn’t have safety regulations on natural gas until after a school blew up and killed hundreds of children. Nobody was held accountable, but they passed strict regulations afterwards. It was so bad that even Hitler sent a letter of condolence.
Yp7m7 Consider the autoclave, which scientists use to sterilize tools and which issues scalding steam to do so. Or consider the heat gun, which is used to dry glassware and to warm distillation devices. It can also ignite anything flammable that gets too close. Glass containers in a vacuum can implode, spraying shards everywhere. Centrifuge rotors can fail, causing explosions that throw shock waves throughout a lab filled with chemicals. Steel vessels built to contain liquids and gases at hundreds of pounds of pressure per square inch can rupture, hurling metal at lab workers.
lo8Y7 TIL that the Mask of Warka, the oldest discovered accurate depiction of a human face (3100 BC), disappeared from the National Museum of Iraq after the 2003 US invasion. A US military mission to recover lost artifacts found the mask, undamaged, buried in a farmer's backyard.
1kv8 TIL According to the US soldiers who guarded him, one of the few times Saddam Hussein ever looked defeated in prison was when they brought him the wrong cereal. (Fruit Loops. He hated Fruit Loops.)
WkLrY TIL when the First World War began, it was compulsory for all British officers to have a moustache. Poignantly, that edict was revoked in October 1916, because the new recruits were so young that some could not rustle up more than a thin, mousey streak.