› added 9 years ago

89

TIL that Cary Elwes and Mandy Patinkin learned to fence both left- and right-handed and performed all of the fencing in the sword fight scene for The Princess Bride

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87YP TIL a third of the human population sneezes when they look at the sun
oBY1R TIL that upon hearing of the Teutoburg incident (9 CE) a.k.a the Varian Disaster, where three whole legions were wiped in an ambush by Germanic tribes, Emperor Augustus was so shaken that he stood butting his head against the walls of his palace shouting 'Quintilius Varus, give me back my legions'
gMae4 TIL in one canton in Switzerland, citizens use their family sword as voter ID and women were only granted the right to vote in 1991.
KO7m9 TIL about the Goiânia accident, one of the worst nuclear disasters. Fascinated locals began playing with glowing dust after opening a stolen radioactive capsule: lighting it on fire, applying it to their bodies, & consuming it. Up to 112,000 may have been exposed, & some died.
XEQWQ TIL that Tukhachevskiy considered as the first military commander to use chemical weapons against its own people. It happened during "Tambov rebellion" when russian peasants resisted the forced confiscation of grain by Red Army.