› added 5 years ago

98

TIL Neil Armstrong's astronaut application arrived a week past the deadline. A friend slipped the tardy form in with the others.

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1GeO TIL while reading about Stalingrad in 1942 that, by itself, the Eastern Front in WW2 was the largest war in history.
NepJ TIL Chinese guerrillas during WWII were given bags of flour, mixed with the powdery white high explosive HMX, to bypass Japanese checkpoints. The resulting mixture could safely be cooked into pancakes and eaten. Leftover dough and pastries could still be used as explosives. Code name: “Aunt Jemima.”
jNX7p TIL If you visit Luxembourg in late February, you may see burning crosses all over the country. This is an ancient Celtic tradition that has been kept to this day, which is meant to chase away winter and welcome spring.
Bg79y TIL The Blood-stained Pink Chanel suit of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy wore in JFK’s assassination remains uncleaned and is currently stored inside a climate-controlled vault in the National Archives and will remain "out of public view" until at least 2103.
W48A TIL it is possible to extinguish all the mosquitoes. Scientists recently reported a system that allows them to push the “Nix” gene to such a system it would essentially create a chain reaction spreading the male gene, producing males until eventually the population crashes.