› added 5 years ago

326

TIL Bobby Fischer who is considered to be the greatest chess player of all time spent the last 16 years of his life in exile after the United States put a warrant out for his arrest for violating sanctions by participating in a chess tournament held in Yugoslavia which was under a trade embargo.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

oR1jE TIL that the single largest infiltration of the United States government in history was committed by the Church of Scientology in order to purge unfavorable records about Scientology and its founder L. Ron Hubbard.
rRoEM TIL about Ashvamedha, a ritualistic horse sacrifice in ancient India where a horse is allowed to wander for 1 year protected by the king's guards. If no rivals manage to kill or steal the horse after a year, it is returned and sacrificed in the city capital, legitimizing the soverignty of the king.
wYGY TIL In the apocryphal Book of Enoch, angels procreate with women and create a giant warrior race. The fallen angels also teach men to make weapons, how to apply eye shadow,and how to make jewelry. The book ends with them being imprisoned, and the earth being destroyed by a flood.
b6ogZ TIL that the first writing system evolved from accounting practices in ancient Mesopotamia. Over a thousand years later, Chinese writing independently developed from divination practices in ancient China.
1anPd TIL 800 years before the Black Death, the same bacteria cause plague in the Byzantine Empire. At it's peak, the plague killed 5,000 per day in Constantinople.