› added 3 years ago

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TIL that the tobacco industry managed to shift blame of people falling asleep with lit cigarettes away from their products onto beds and sofas being too flammable getting the government to force flame retardants into all sorts of home products that now are linked to cancer etc.

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aAXo TIL in 1486, Spanish mathematician Paolo Valmes was allegedly burned at the stake for claiming to have solved the quartic equation because it was a against the will of God “such a solution (is) inaccessible to human understanding”
x6ln5 TIL when a brig hit an iceberg in 1849 (Hannah), Captain Shaw and his first and second officers took the only lifeboat. They abandoned the 200 passengers and eventually won in court.
Xpjj TIL that Philip K. Dick never saw the completed version of “Blade Runner” and Ridley Scott never finished reading “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”
VONG TIL that after the highest-ranking defector from the Eastern Bloc, a 3-star general in the secret police of Romania, arrived in US, a bounty of 2 mil was placed on him. Yasser Arafat and Muammar al-Gaddafi set a 1 mil reward each. Additionally, Carlos the Jackal was hired. Gen. Pacepa still lives.
16897 TIL about George Spencer. He was executed by hanging for charges of sodomy after being convicted for an alleged sexual act with an animal. When a sow gave birth to a malformed piglet resembling Spencer, it was believed that this was irrefutable evidence that an act of bestiality had taken place