› added 13 years ago

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TIL Kris Kristofferson was a Golden Gloves boxer, a Rhodes Scholar, a military Captain, a West Point professor, and landed a helicopter in Johnny Cash’s yard to hand him music that became song of the year, ultimately going ono a successful music career, and then onto Hollywood to make movies.

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lR7B TIL Confederate cavalry general Nathan Bedford Forrest was the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. He quit the group less than two years later. In 1875 he was invited to give a speech before an organization of black Southerners advocating racial reconciliation and equality. (Speech in Comments)
WEZY TIL that in 1994, Bill Gates bought the Da Vinci Codex for $30M and then had it scanned and distributed as screensaver and wallpapers for Windows95
wKMJ TIL Physicist Richard Feynman memorized pi up to the 762nd digit, where there are six 9’s in a row, just so he could joke, “…9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9 and so on…”. For this reason, this sequence of 9’s is named the Feynman Point.
Jo68 TIL a man named Khattab led several successful guerrilla attacks against Russian forces in the Chechen wars. After the war, he survived multiple assassination attempts by Russian secret service, including one where he was shot with a sniper rifle. Eventually he died to a letter filed with poison.
8aDxK TIL that Mark Ruffalo won his role in Shutter Island by sending a fan letter to Martin Scorsese in which he told him how much he’d love to work with him. Ruffalo's future co-stars Robert Downey Jr and Josh Brolin were being considered for the role.