› added 8 years ago

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TIL: Vasili Arkhipov, a senior officer on a Soviet submarine, refused to launch a nuclear torpedo in October 1962 perhaps preventing WWIII

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x9AD TIL 80% of the lottery winners file for bankruptcy within five years.
X8GQ TIL The father of the modern insurance industry was named If-Christ-had-not-died-for-thee-thou-hadst-been-damned Barebone
b9pJE TIL Ketchup was sold in the 1830s as medicine. However, as it turned out, it was merely a marketing scheme.
eplMJ TIL about Jack Barsky, a former KGB agent who lived in the US. The FBI bought the property next door and monitored him for 3 years. He was caught and confessed. Barsky later became close friends with the FBI agent tasked with monitoring him and he is now a godfather to Barsky's child.
Egnkx TIL The Stranger (1946) was the first Hollywood film to include footage of the Holocaust. The film's director, Orson Welles, who saw footage at the United Nations Conference on International Organization in May 1945, described the newsreels as "putrefaction of the soul, a perfect spiritual garbage"