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TIL the FBI recruited a mafia enforcer to help solve the slaying of three civil rights workers by the Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi in the 1960s. Gregory Scarpa kidnapped a klansman, put a gun in his mouth and forced him to reveal the spot where the three had been buried.

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AONw TIL there is a plan in place to build an offshore technology hub near San Francisco but in international waters so that anyone can come and work on projects from around the world without a visa.
ymp8 TIL when Australian driver Alan Jones won the 1977 Austrian Formula 1 Grand Prix, the race organisers didn’t have a copy of his national anthem to play at the podium ceremony (unaware that it was God Save The Queen). Instead, a drunk person played “Happy Birthday” on a trumpet.
6MQY TIL the Soviet Union and the United States were originally in talks to go to the moon together during the Cold War. Nikita Khruschev was poised to accept the plan but then President Kennedy was assassinated. The Soviets did not trust Vice President Johnson, so Khruschev rejected the plan.
X0o5X TIL A 2 billion yen run on a Japanese bank in 1973 was traced back to a casual remark about the danger of working in a bank during a conversation between three female high school students.
LQgld TIL The biological father of Martin Gore, founding member of Depeche Mode and its musical driving force, and key figure in the New Wave, Synth Pop, and Alternative Dance music genres, is African American. Gore himself only learned when he turned 30 and has since visited him in the American south.