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TIL in 2007 an FBI agent posing as AP reporter sent a fake article link to a 15 y/o suspected of bomb threats. A tracking tool revealed his location and helped the agents confirm his identity. This later resulted to lawsuits by the press against the FBI and led to a $145k settlement in 2014

Read more nbcnews.com

via reddit.com

GAMD1 TIL that Sweden once had overseas colonies in Africa, India, South America, the Caribbean, and North America. Most were taken over by other European powers after a short amount of time; the only exception was the island of Saint Barthélemy, which it held for nearly a century.
6VrW TIL Bill Clinton’s cat has his own unreleased SNES game, in which he fights caricatures of Republican leaders to warn the White House of a stolen nuclear missile.
ddNj TIL of Henry Moseley, who rearranged the Periodic Table based on atomic mass and died aged only 27 in WW1. Isaac Asimov said of his death, ‘in view of what he might still have accomplished … his death might well have been the most costly single death of the War to mankind generally’.
78pOL TIL, Operation Paperclip was a secret United States intelligence program in which more than 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians were taken from the former Nazi Germany to the U.S. for government employment after the end of World War II in Europe, between 1945 and 1959.
NVZM TIL after the french revolution, France briefly used a new calendar based on a decimal system; 10 days a week, 10 hours a day, 100 minutes per hour and 100 seconds per minute, and starting at Year 1.