› added 12 years ago

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TIL an Australian farmer protested government-imposed wheat quotas by ceding from Australia and creating his own country. This was 40 years ago. The country still exists, and he’s the king.

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QJRwp TIL of the violent episode of the civil rights movement, the Orangeburg Massacre. On February 8, 1968, a civil rights protest at South Carolina State University turned deadly when 3 young men were killed, 28 people wounded, shot as they fled the assault by law enforcement.
vdJB TIL that the hacker Kevin Mitnick was kept in solitary confinement for 8 months because “law enforcement told the judge that he could somehow dial into the NORAD modem via a payphone from prison and communicate with the modem by whistling to launch nuclear missiles.”
9Yr1D TIL that the R in APR is not an INTEREST rate, but the OVERALL rate of a loan; that is, how much the loan costs fees AND interest!
pYymA TIL If you have a fear of bridges, you can hire a service where someone gets behind the wheel of your car and drives you across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, a 4.3-mile stretch in Maryland known as one of the scariest bridges in the world.
4kmgb TIL in 1970 Robert White successfully transplanted the head of a rhesus monkey onto another decapitated monkey. It survived for eight days, able to smell, hear, see, and move its mouth. But it was paralyzed from the neck down, as White was unable to reconnect the severed spinal cord.