› added 3 years ago

176

TIL of Deli Mike, a Turkish Airlines Airbus A340 notable for her temperamental behavior. Known for “pranking” passengers and crew, she would turn lights on and off and refuse to retract the landing gear seemingly at random. One story went that staff fixed a faulty instrument panel by talking to her.

XVeE TIL that when celebrity chef Jamie Oliver slaughtered a live lamb on television, he was praised by PETA for broadcasting it uncensored, as it “could turn the more diehard carnivore into a vegetarian”.
E1PL7 TIL in 1977 David Begelman, then head of Columbia Pictures, was caught embezzling $75,000 from the studio. To avoid a scandal he was quietly fired, and three years later became CEO of MGM. The actor who discovered his embezzlement was Blacklisted by the studio for reporting it to the police.
a8PmN TIL Napoleon had planned an invasion of the UK but it was never carried out. Preparations were financed by the sale of the Louisiana territory to the US which the US financed with a loan from a British bank, so Britain was indirectly funding an invasion of itself.
9YVOm TIL in the 1960s, a woman found the head of an axe, a gashed skull, and macabre sketches of murder victims in an iron tub in her attic. It turned out to be the evidence from the Lizzie Borden murder trial- her father had been Lizzie’s lawyer, and she’d given him the evidence after her acquittal.
jNl4X TIL about Yoshie Shiratori. He escaped Japanese prison 4 times. The first time he picked some simple locks, the next time he climbed up a wall and broke a skylight, the next time he dislocated his joints to escape through a small hole, and lastly he dug a hole with a bowl. Every time was different.