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TIL in 1814, British soldiers invading Washington, DC arrived at the White House to find food, wine, and arrangements for a lavish dinner party Dolley Madison had prepared prior to fleeing the coming invasion. The soldiers sat and ate the meal and drank the wine. Then they burned down the house.

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Gj51 TIL that lie detectors aren’t reliable, and the creator of the polygraph himself called the machine a “Frankenstein’s Monster” due to law enforcements use of it.
mPxM TIL that Grete Waitz, a middle distance runner, was recruited for the 1978 NYC Marathon to set a fast pace and drop out. She kept running, and won the race, setting a world record. As she neared the finish line, no one knew her name, and many thought she was a man with pigtails.
d89o7 TIL In June of Year Without Summer (1816), a group of writers had to stay indoors in Switzerland because of “incessant rain”. As a result of a contest to write the scariest story, Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, Lord Byron wrote A Fragment, a precursor to Dracula
xVAD7 TIL that the largest volcanic eruption of the 20th Century was Novarupta, in Alaska in 1912. The eruption lasted for 60 hours and created the Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes. Due to its remoteness, the eruption did not kill anyone.
4XwNJ TIL that in 1920 a 4th century lead tablet was discovered in which Silvanus asked the god Nodens to curse the thief that stole his ring. The ring, interestingly, has been identified as one found 130km from the tablet 200 years prior.