› added 6 years ago

149

TIL in 1989, billionaire Richard Branson released a hot air balloon shaped like a UFO and hired a midget dressed as E.T. to scare people when it landed.

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gM5Pb TIL about the 1898 Siege of Baler. During the Philippine revolution a 50 soldiers detachment of the Spanish 2nd Expeditionary Battalion Cazadores managed to survive 337 days in a fortified church, while killing 700 Filipino Revolutionaries and suffering only 17 casualties mostly due to disease.
P1x7J TIL that when a hermit crab outgrows its shell but finds one that's too big for it, it will wait for other hermit crabs to arrive and test out the shell. The crabs line up from smallest to largest so that all of them can exchange shells (though fights over the shells may occur)
9xdm TIL that in the state of California (and many others), it’s legal for police officers to kill somebody just for resisting the ‘execution of some legal process'—which means you don’t even have to be resisting arrest for the police to kill you in a 'justifiable homicide.’
BrQGb TIL Iceland is the only country where 100% of the population has internet access.
69OQ TIL that for Saving Private Ryan, Steven Spielberg requested that no one gain admittance to the movie once it had begun.