› added 6 years ago

159

TIL that the FBI found the bodies of the 1964 Freedom Summer murders with the help of a hitman who, along with an agent, beat and kidnapped a KKK member. The Klansman had a gun barrel shoved down his throat as the hitman “started cutting his dick off with a razor” until the location was revealed.

Read more newyorker.com

via reddit.com

N7P96 TIL the official name of Mexico is "The United States of Mexico".
XE4yE TIL Due to China’s early discovery and love of ceramics they didn’t produce any glass between the 14th-19th century. This meant they didn’t have mirrors and windows etc, leaving them behind in sciences, as they didn’t make lenses and other things fundamental to science.
9LPD TIL Texas is #1 in toxic chemicals released into water, carcinogens released into air, carbon dioxide emissions, hazardous waste, #2 in overall birth rate, #50 in % with high school diploma, population insured, women receiving prenatal care in first trimester
6EMd8 Hong Kong-based students, Sum Ming Wong and Kin Pong Li designed a door handle that uses light to always keep itself sterilized. The students were inspired by the SARS outbreak in the 2000s and figured that a self-sanitizing door handle is more effective than the chemical-based cleaning processes we are using right now. The handle is made of a glass tube with aluminum caps at each end and the entire handle is covered in a powdered photocatalytic coating made from a mineral called titanium dioxide. The bacteria is decomposed through a chemical reaction that is activated by UV light reacting with the thin coating on the glass tube.
x5B1 TIL that a Norwegian boy escaped from wolves by playing a heavy metal song by Megadeth on his cell phone.