› added 11 years ago

83

TIL there was a ship that hit a shoal, then ran aground. Its lifeboat’s engine failed. The first ship that tried to help it also ran aground, then a rescue aircraft tried to land on the nearby coast but dug into the dirt. Four days later, it was fixed, took off, then crashed again 43 minutes later.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

mxdo TIL that female protesters in Egypt were subjected to virginity tests after being arrested. In 2012.
ADZd7 When a mosquito bites, it pierces your skin and draws blood with the tip of its straw-like mouth, or proboscis. In the process, the mosquito injects some of its own saliva, which contains an anticoagulant that prevents your blood from clotting around the proboscis and trapping the insect. (Only female mosquitoes, which need the nutrients from the blood to produce eggs, bite.)
vPGLK TIL That Robert Todd Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln's eldest son, was close to or directly at all three presidential assassinations that happened during his life time. He swore off presidential events as a result fearing his presence meant a president would die.
D1gOe TIL Rapper G. Dep killed a man in 1993. Plagued by guilt, he tried to confess to the crime in 2010. The police did nothing. So two weeks later he went back to the station to confess again. The second time they matched his account to a cold case and charged him with murder.
awdnM TIL Stanley Kubrick wanted to use Pink Floyd's Atom Heart Mother suite in A Clockwork Orange. Pink Floyd's bassist Roger Waters refused when he found out Kubrick would edit the music to fit the film. Later, Waters asked Kubrick to use sounds from 2001: A Space Odyssey on a record. Kubrick refused.