› added 8 years ago

309

TIL that astrophysicist Carl Sagan and his wife would smuggle books about the history of the Russian Revolution into the USSR so that their colleagues could read them, since recorded history lessons in Russia were actively manipulated by Joseph Stalin at the time.

oWyL TIL there’s a a fake bomb detector produced in the UK that has been sold to 20 countries in the Middle East and Far East, including Iraq and Afghanistan, for as much as $60,000 per unit. The fake bomb detector is still in use by police and army in those countries.
BrK1K TIL I learned the source of the internet myth that Mr. Rogers was a sniper: The screenwriters of A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood say they discovered in their research that there was another Fred Rogers who was a sharpshooter for the Marines, and his self-promotion confused a lot of people online
OKag TIL that Bratislava Airport is within an hour’s drive of Vienna (Austria), Brno (Czech Republic), Győr (Hungary), and of course Bratislava (Slovakia), making it the only airport to serve four countries
QJR5E TIL of an organization in Belgium training giant rats (nicknamed "HeroRATs") to sniff out landmines in countries where explosive remnants of war pose a large threat to communities. The rats are extremely effective, outperforming both metal detectors and bomb-sniffing dogs.
wy87 TIL hundreds of excavating machines (worth millions of dollars) have been buried underground in London because abandoning them is cheaper than digging them back out