› added 12 years ago

844

TIL scientists accidentally killed the world’s oldest living animal.

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KYgA4 TIL That throughout the Cold War, almost the entire CIA's Cuban network of spies, actually worked for Cuba as double agents.
e0lK5 TIL that King George V’s physician gave the dying king a lethal dosage of morphine and cocaine to hasten his death so that it could be announced in the morning edition of The Times rather than “less appropriate evening journals.”
GYNo4 TIL that bats in the US eat so many insects that they save farmers an estimated $22.9 billion every year on pesticides.
e0LYL TIL that in 1949, Gallup polled Americans on what scientific advances they thought would happen by the year 1999. 88% believed cancer would be cured, and 63% believed planes would be nuclear powered. Only 15% thought a man would walk on the moon.
yLZM TIL the ATF set up a sting operation during which they hired and then arrested a mentally retarded man, allowed armed felons to leave the store, arrested four of the wrong people, paid such high prices for guns that people sold them to the agents at a profit, and eventually got burglarized.