Post * Xnlj — Curious Curator

› added 10 years ago

140

TIL that foundries use dirt floors because molten metal can make concrete explode due to trapped moisture

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GYyDN TIL in 2008, MI5 released a 14-page document warning British businesses of Chinese “honeytraps”- that Chinese intelligence would use “sexual relationships and illegal activities to pressurize individuals to co-operate with them”, to gain access to computer networks.

OoanY TIL in 1989 a US student on spring break in Mexico was kidnapped and used as a human sacrifice by a drug cartel / cult. This is the inspiration for the 2007 movie Borderland.

5V5D8 TIL that During the First Gulf War, an American Patriot missile battery used double values in its calculations. The inaccuracy caused it to fail to track and intercept an incoming Iraqi Scud missile, and 28 soldiers were killed

yMaV TIL: There were 6500 veteran suicides in 2012, about 17.8 suicides a day.

XEr9X TIL that Morgan Robertson wrote a novel in 1898 about an ocean liner sinking in the North Atlantic after hitting an iceberg. That is 14 years before the Titanic sunk in the same place and in the same way. And if this was not enough, the novel was titled: "The Wreck of the Titan: Or, Futility".