› added 9 years ago

178

TIL George Soros used a loophole to defer paying taxes and instead reinvest his money. Following this rule, after 40 years a Hedge Fund manager could amass $15.9B as opposed to $2.4B (amount if taxes were paid when the money was earned).

Read more bloomberg.com

via reddit.com

69Rkl TIL during World War II, the British government commissioned a project called "Operation Vegetarian," which planned to drop linseed cakes infected with anthrax over Germany to contaminate livestock and cause a food shortage. The plan was never executed, test sites remained contaminated for decades.
VBJND TIL that Willie Littlechild, the former Grand Chief of the Confederacy of Treaty Six First Nations, attended a residential indigenous school and was the first “status Indian”to get a law degree in Alberta.
wL1ZY TIL that "world’s leading source of high-grade uranium" was accidentally found in 1966 by a bunch of oil dudes who took a Geiger counter on a plane so they could write off their fishing trips as business expenses.
8aKEX Today I learned that the First Federal Congress of the United States met on March 4, 1789. Its first official act was to adjourn the meeting for failure to achieve a quorum. It would first achieve a quorum on April 1, 1789.
Z8VZQ TIL that there is actually a term for that creepy feeling when you drive somewhere and have no recollection—it's a form of automaticity called "highway hypnosis" and is a product of the conscious and unconscious minds focusing on different things.