› added 5 years ago

109

TIL Erskine Childers, a propagandist for the IRA during the Civil War, shook the hands of the men in the firing squad at his execution, and had his son promise to do the same for the men who signed his death warrant. His last words were “Take a step or two forward, lads, it will be easier that way.”

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

b976j TIL that the Commissariat Department, which was responsible for supplying the British army during the Crimean War, sent them a shipment of boots, with all the left boots on one ship and all the right boots on another. One of the ships sank.
9Y87Q TIL that despite being filled with flammable hydrogen, the Hindenburg airship had a smoking lounge on board.
4XlWa TIL after author James Frey was caught fabricating parts of his memoir A Million Little Pieces, Random House offered purchasers of the book a refund. To get this refund, they had to send in page 163 of their book & a sworn statement that they purchased it under the assumption that it was a memoir.
VMOym TIL there was a virus in the popular video game, World of Warcraft, which, despite being intended for a small area, spread rapidly causing vacant cities and widespread death until it was fixed. The event grabbed the attention of epidemiologists.
e0yJ4 TIL Benito Mussolini signed Vatican City into existence. The 1929 Lateran Treaty ended the dispute between the Italian government & the Catholic Church, which allowed the Vatican to exist as its own sovereign state and compensated the church $92 million (> $1 billion today) for the Papal states.