› added 9 years ago

205

TIL that Eliahu Itzkovitz’s family was murdered in the Holocaust by a guard named Stănescu. When he learned that Stănescu was serving in the French Foreign Legion, Itzkovitz deserted from the Israeli Navy, joined the Legion, became Stănescu’s trusted subordinate, and gunned him down

Read more desertsun.co.uk

via reddit.com

MeadW TIL in 1996, Russia launched a Mars Rover called "Mars96". It crashed back to earth after 2 days, containing plutonium-238 fuel which would have survived the impact. Nobody ever bothered to look for it, and it's believed to just be lying around the Andes mountains.
4n86 TIL C.S. Lewis after being raised in a Christian family, became an atheist at 15, and later became a Christian again after a long discussion with J.R.R Tolkien and Hugo Dyson. He wrote about this in his book Surprised by Joy.
4MNb TIL Sean Bean is terrified of flying. So during Lord of the Rings when the cast had to fly to remote shoot locations by helicopter, like the snowy mountains, he travelled part of the way via ski-lift and then spend two hours walking the remainder of the journey, in full Boromir costume.
RQP8 TIL The Simpsons episode ‘Homer at Bat’ is credited with saving at least two choking victims because their saviors had learned the Heimlich maneuver from a poster visible in the episode
KBVB TIL The Areni-1 shoe is a 5,500-year-old leather shoe that was found in 2008 in near perfect condition. For perspective, the shoes are 400 years older than those found at Stonehenge, and 1,000 years older than those found at the Great Pyramid of Giza.