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TIL: more US soldiers died in the US Civil War than all other US wars combined, based on recent estimates

Read more bbc.co.uk

via reddit.com

WkkJd TIL In 1961 a B-52 bomber broke up in mid-air and dropped an armed nuclear bomb near the city of Goldsboro, NC. The bomb did not detonate but the recently declassified report said that "one simple, dynamo-technology, low voltage switch stood between the United States and a major catastrophe".
D1X8p TIL, Pete Ham and Tom Evans, the songwriters of the song "Without You" (hit singles for Harry Nilsson and Mariah Carey) both committed suicide. Ham's suicide was because of financial troubles and Evans' suicide was because of a dispute over songwriting royalties for this song.
OXd7 TIL Michelle Pfeiffer was taken in by a cult early in her career and gave them most of her acting money. She was deprogrammed as a result of a movie on the subject.
Or1 TIL that the more than 100,000 people working on the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge Tennessee in the 1940s had no idea what they were working on. It wasn’t until the local newspaper printed the bombing of Hiroshima were the workers told what they had been working on for the last several years.
neko9 TIL about Dr. Farid Fata, an oncologist who falsely diagnosed 500+ patients with cancer they never had, subjected them to unnecessary treatments, including chemo, and then fraudulently billed over $30 million to their insurance. He was sentenced to 45 years in prison after pleading guilty in 2014.