› added 9 years ago

174

TIL on 3rd July 1988 the US Navy shot down a civilian passenger flight killing all 290 on board, including 66 children and 16 crew.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

BgNW TIL Hurricane Sandy sank the HMS Bounty (the ship used in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies), was predicted to be a 100 billion dollar storm, and still, the Sentinels who guard the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers stood guard through it all.
mx0Wy TIL about David Vetter, a child who lived with a severely weakened immune system meaning that he spent the majority of his life inside a sterile bubble. In 1997 researchers from NASA create a specialized space suit for him, allowing him to walk outside his bubble for the first time.
xV6aB TIL when a law firm filed a class-action lawsuit against Taco Bell claiming the chain's seasoned beef filling isn’t beefy enough to be called beef by USDA standards, the chain spent $3-$4million to defend its beef filling as ‘high quality’ & insisted that the product is actually 88% beef.
rN40d TIL that a heavily Christianized version of Buddha’s story was immensely popular in Europe in the 11th century as the Legend of Barlaam and Josaphat; although British became first aware of Buddhism’s existence as a religion only in the 19th century.
jNadX TIL that the song ‘The Most Wonderful Time of the Year’ mentioning “scary ghost stories” is from the pre-Christianity pagan belief that the winter solstice, being the longest night, was when the dead could most easily return.