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TIL that after Hunter S. Thompson, the author best known for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, died, he was cremated and his ashes were fired out of a cannon. The cannon was placed on top of a 153-foot statue of a fist holding a peyote button, paid for by Johnny Depp.

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YgEv TIL that in the 1950’s The United States military launched 480 million copper needles into space, effectively creating an artificial ionosphere. The needles were meant to be used to facilitate global communication. It was called Project West Ford.
e0ken TIL of the 'Ill Week' - a kind of late medieval version of the Purge. When Elizabeth I died there was a popular belief that the laws of a kingdom were suspended between the death of a sovereign and the proclamation of the successor.
GY5X7 TIL Australian PM Gough Whitlam was removed by a British-American coup for abolishing royal patronage, moving Australia towards the Non-Aligned Movement, supporting “zones of peace”, opposing nuclear weapons testing, and threatening to close a CIA espionage base in Australia
6E1Jl TIL Salvador Dali was attracted to Hitler "“I often dreamed of Hitler as a woman. His flesh, which I had imagined whiter than white, ravished me…”
9Ym1r TIL when a chimpanzee that learns an effective method to crack nuts open is placed into a new group that uses a less effective strategy, it will eventually stop using the superior method just to blend in with the rest of the chimps.