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TIL after Stalin's son Yakov, failed suicide attempt in his room via firearm. He missed his heart and hit his lung instead; while his stepmother Alliluyeva tended to his wound and called the doctor, Stalin is quoted as saying, "He can't even shoot straight".

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QNxmk TIL about "Man Engines" which were moving ladders that constantly moved up and down about 10 feet and used to move miners from 1000 ft deep mine shafts by stepping on and off the ladder step at the top of the up stroke, then stepping onto the next step on the down stroke (animation in link)
J1Rek TIL: in 1906 a group of 500 students from Missouri State University demanded they be let into the Cole Bros. circus for $0.25 instead of $0.50. When they couldn't stay for the concert after the show they marched to the train yard ripped up rails and greased them so the train couldn't leave town.
NXmbM TIL that while Secretary of War in the Pierce administration, Jefferson Davis revolutionized the United States Army. It increased in size, and troops were given better equipment, better training, and increased pay. Davis would go on to fight a war against this army a mere four years later.
PYg7Z TIL There's a zip file titled '42.zip'. It's known as a zip bomb or 'zip of death' because it's original size is only 42 kilobytes. But when it's uncompressed, it expands to 4.5 petabytes (4,500,000 gigabytes), crashing the antivirus program and then the system.
16OL4 TIL in early 2000 when Eminem submitted The Marshall Mathers LP to label boss Jimmy Iovine, he was unsatisfied & said that it didn't have a hit single. In direct response to this, Em created the album's second single "The Way I Am" with the track's piano rhythm even coming to him on the plane home.