› added 1 year ago

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TIL: Gerhard Schrader created Preparation 9/91, an insecticide, for his employers. However, it was too effective and killed users leading to his employers to say he failed. The, however, impressed the Third Reich and he was hired for $20,000 to develop it into Sarin gas as modern poisons took hours.

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pYRBA TIL: During the One World Trade Center construction, workers had the choice of bringing lunches or facing the nearly impossible task of descending to ground in 30 minutes for food. To solve this, a Subway franchise created a full shop in a shipping container, which was lifted to the workers daily.
oBbvK TIL German author Hermann Hesse's mother was born in India. His grandfather compiled the Malayalam language, wrote the English-Malayalam dictionary & translated the Bible from English to Malayalam. This all lead to his 1922 novel 'Siddhartha'.
xaMb TIL that in 1861, a small hamlet in Western NY voted to cecede and join the Confederates, sending 5 soldiers to fight. They didn’t officially rejoin the Union until 1946.
PYL6G TIL In 1912, the USA was given radio designation letters W, K, N, and A. The letters ‘N’ and ‘A’ were given to military stations, but ‘K’ and ‘W’ were assigned out for commercial use. Stations east of the Mississippi River had to start with ‘W’, and stations west of the Mississippi with 'K'.
mxvdP TIL about Valerie Solanas, a radical feminist who founded SCUM (Society for Cutting Up Men) and attempted to assassinate Andy Warhol, going so far as to stalk him after her release from prison