› added 6 years ago

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TIL When Fidel Castro learned of a CIA plot to kill him involving his lover giving him poison pills, he gave her a gun and told her to kill him, but her nerves failed her.

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oKM8 TIL for a brief period of time New York City was named New Orange
0wYaA TIL California prison inmates help fight forest fires.
p8Xo4 TIL about the Windows XP wallpaper. The image is called "Bliss" and it's a supposedly unedited image of a hill found on the Los Carneros American Viticultural Area. The photographer, Charles O'Rear, says he took it on his way to visit his girlfriend. Eventually in 2000, he was contacted by Microsoft
e9Qb TIL: World of Beer has an internship, called “Drink it Interns,” that pays $12,000 for four months to travel, drink beer and write about it. Plus all travel paid for!
a8vNL TIL that Carlo Urbani, an Italian Microbiologist, was the first to identify SARS-COV-1 in Vietnam and report it to the WHO as a dangerous new pathogen. Urbani himself died of SARS himself shortly after, having triggered a rapid response to a potential pandemic, and saving many lives.