› added 11 years ago

88

TIL in 1998, two tanker trains, one of which was transporting fuel oil, collided and derailed in Cameroon. As locals started to scavenge the fuel in an assortment of containers, a smoker among them threw down a lit cigarette. At least 200 people were killed in the resulting flash-fire.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

0gnp TIL 1 Newton is the weight of an average apple.
9YR4r TIL that the seven-colour rainbow flag is used by many cultures and movements - the native people of the Andes, the city of Cusco (Peru), the Jewish Autonomous Oblast (a Russian region bordering China), the shrine of Indian guru Meher Baba, and the international peace movement
Jbe8 TIL Misbehaving officers in Thailand are made to wear Hello Kitty armbands as a badge of shame.
RGpw TIL Not only does the “@” symbol predate email by several centuries, there are many noted occurrences of its use throughout history for a wide variety of purposes– but the origin of the symbol itself is shrouded in mystery.
Me8pa TIL as a result of it's war with the US government during the 1970s, the Church of Scientology discovered internal documents from the CIA which proposed a mind-control experiment in which hypnotized subjects would have an uncontrollable impulse to ‘commit a nuisance’ on Groundhog Day in 1961.