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TIL: Shortly after Charles Manson was arrested he wrote to one of the "Manson Family" members from jail asking her to assassinate President Ford. She approached Ford and pointed a gun at his face but was tackled to the ground by secret service agents after her gun misfired.

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4W8b TIL during WW2, Krystyna Skarbek became a British spy and smuggled intelligence reports and anti-tanks guns from Hungary to the Allies. When she was arrested by Gestapo, she bit her tongue hard enough to bleed and convinced them she had tuberculosis, which made them release her.
ZpZAo TIL that in 1945, a bulldozer in Liverpool uncovered a narrow metal cylinder containing the skeleton of a man. Diaries and other personal effects on the remains strongly suggest that the man died in 1885, but the exact circumstances of how he ended up in the cylinder remain unknown
XEmLr TIL when Professor Robert Goddard proposed using rockets to send men to the moon the New York Times ran a scathing editorial questioning his credentials, his chair at Clark College and intelligence. In response to Apollo 11 they printed one of the most famous retractions in history.
a8Lx0 TIL in 1945, at 59 years old, Albert Stevens was misdiagnosed with terminal stomach cancer, and as a result was secretly injected with 131 kBq (3.55 μCi) of Plutonium as part of a human experimentation project by Joseph Gilbert Hamilton. It was later discovered the "cancer" was an inflamed ulcer.
BWby TIL that the largest gun built in World War 1 could fire a shell into the stratosphere.