› added 5 years ago

86

TIL that in 2011 CIA Operative Raymond Davis was arrested in Pakistan after killing 2 men. A CIA Team coming to his aid was driving on the wrong side of the road and killed another man. Davis was freed after paying $2.4 million in Blood Money while the others avoided arrest and escaped the country

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

yQNaV TIL that the first ever video game easter egg was created by Warren Robinett in Adventure released during 1979, which featured a gray dot which, when brought back to the beginning, would display Warren Robinett's name as a way to give him credit since Atari only paid him a small amount of money.
vpDj TIL that the members of the crew of the Essex, the ship that was sunk by a sperm whale (and inspired “Moby Dick”), were forced to resort to cannibalism to stay alive on their longboats. Toward the end, they drew lots to see who would be killed for the benefit of the others. Only 8 of 20 survived.
oBA6K TIL: Based on a 9th-century Taoist text, the invention of gunpowder by Chinese alchemists was likely an accidental byproduct from experiments seeking to create the elixir of life.
OGnoY TIL of the "world's rudest waiter," Edsel Ford Fong, who greeted visitors with an admonition to "Sit down and shut up!" He was known for calling patrons "retarded" and "fat", criticizing people's menu choices and then telling them what they should order, amongst others.
WkjPN TIL Dirk Obbink got a MacArthur genius grant for reassembling papyrus scrolls carbonized by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in A.D. 79, but then got fired from Oxford Uni for allegedly fraudulently selling biblical papyri belonging to the Egypt Exploration Society as his own for millions of dollars.