› added 11 years ago

105

TIL the CIA in Vietnam, in a program called “Operation Phoenix,” secretly, without trial, executed at least twenty thousand civilians in South Vietnam who were suspected of being members of the Communist underground.

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a86Pb TIL about Hans Redl, who lost his left arm in World War II in 1943. He went on to compete in the Wimbledon tennis championships after the war, advancing to the fourth round.
b9084 TIL about the Nirvana Fallacy. Under this fallacy, the choice is not between real world solutions; it is, rather, a choice between one realistic achievable possibility and another unrealistic solution that could in some way be "better".
16k9X TIL Fritz Lang’s film “Woman in the Moon” is often cited as the first occurrence in media of the "countdown to zero" before a rocket launch. It was so influential that the first successfully launched V-2 rocket at the rocket facility in Peenemünde had the Frau im Mond logo painted on its base.
v1L7L TIL If you spell Bananas without the B it's the scientific name for pineapples
PYaQZ TIL that the French military actually has the best military record of the last 800 years