› added 7 months ago

89

TIL In 2014 a Jamaican phone scammer threatened to kill a retired American man named William Webster when he wouldn't fall for the scam. The scammer didn't know Webster was the former director of both the FBI and CIA. He was arrested when he flew to NYC in 2017 and sentenced to 6 years in prison.

Read more fbi.gov

via reddit.com

GAwdg TIL Valentine's Day may have roots in the Roman festival of Lupercalia. At the festival, naked priests, smeared in the blood of a goat would parade through the streets with strips of bloody goat hide, whipping any women they saw. Men randomly drew women's names from jars to be coupled with.
7kor TIL that an artificial intelligence system named Watson started swearing during a game of Jeopardy because it had learned vocabulary from the Urban Dictionary.
6EBWw TIL Hershey's once developed a chocolate bar for the US Army that would remain solid up to 49C (120F) and was poison gas proof but was also very bitter to prevent soldiers from eating it unless in an emergency. Troops called it "Hitler's Secret Weapon" because of what it would do to their bowels.
N7B7Q TIL that the word echo comes from a nymph in Greek myth, Echo, who was cursed with a speech impediment so that she could only repeat what others said.
XEb7r TIL hurricanes can collide into a phenomenon called the Fujiwhara Effect. At 900 miles, the two cyclones begin to orbit up until they reach 190 miles of each other, which is the moment when they'll then merge and the two storms turn into a single giant one.