› added 5 years ago

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TIL two men paid €1.5 million in counterfeit money for a painting, only to find out that the painting was fake.

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JYN5j TIL of a POW camp for German soldiers in Manitoba, Canada. The location was so remote, escape was virtually impossible. This meant that prisoners had a great deal of freedom, including being allowed to date girls from a nearby town and attend dances.
oBYOE TIL In WW2, the first operational jet fighter, the deadly German Me 262s, were too fast for the Allied fighters, so the allies would follow the jets back to their base, then attack them on their landing approach, when they were travelling slowly, and incapable of rapid acceleration.
Oo9xg TIL During the regime of General Sani Abacha (1993-98), Wole Soyinka (first African to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature) escaped from Nigeria. Abacha later proclaimed a death sentence against him "in absentia." With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, Soyinka returned to his nation.
x61R0 TIL about GRB 080319B: a gamma ray burst that is the most intrinsically bright object ever observed by humans in the universe and farthest object observable with the naked eye. It would be 21 quadrillion times brighter than the sun.
4kMmJ TIL that the Man vs. Horse Marathon, held annually since 1980, has been won by a human only four times: in 2004, 2007, 2022 and 2023. In all other years, the victory has gone to a horse