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TIL John Gotti's 13 year old son was struck by a car and killed when he darted out into a street on a mini motorbike. The driver of the vehicle, a neighbor whose son had previously slept over at the Gotti house, disappeared 5 months later. He was allegedly shot in the head and dissolved in acid

Read more telegraph.co.uk

via reddit.com

6kmZ TIL of James “Shanghai” Kelly, who in the 1800s kidnapped men and forced them to work on ships. One year on his birthday he announced he was hosting a free “booze cruise” to celebrate, served opium-laced whiskey to the attendees, then offloaded them onto waiting ships and got 100 men in one night
Zpe1Q TIL The Deep Purple song Smoke on the Water is about an incident at a casino where Frank Zappa was playing a concert and a fan fired a flare gun which caused the casino to catch fire and burn down.
yQpxM TIL that when euro bank notes were issued in 2002, they featured fictional bridges, so as not to cause a row amongst EU member countries. 10 years later, however, an architect for the town of Spijkenisse claimed them for the Netherlands by building all seven of them on a single waterway.
1D TIL Charles Darwin married his cousin, but only after making a list of pros and cons, one of the cons being “less money for books”
b6pb7 TIL The United States built 2,710 Liberty ships between 1941 and 1945, averaging 1.5 ships a day. Liberty Ships were quick simple cheap cargo ships needed for the mass transport of supplies. The ships were lightly armed but the SS Stephen Hopkins manged to fight a cargo raider to mutual destruction.