› added 5 years ago

135

TIL of the Texas City Disaster, the deadliest industrial accident in United States history. The explosion, caused by a ship full of ammonium nitrate catching fire, was so large that the ship's anchor serves as a memorial to the explosion where it landed... a mile and a half inland.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

pAlQ TIL in 1987, a man convicted of raping and murdering both a 10-year-boy, and an 8-year-old girl, was released from prison after only 12 years served for “good behavior”. He went on to commit 12 more murders.
OoJxR TIL Because she supported the Civil Rights movement, the FBI created a fake story that actress Jean Seberg had cheated on her husband with a black man, the stress of the fake story caused her to go into labor premature and resulted in the death of her baby.
epAx6 TIL The company Blizzard inadvertedly inspired the creation of the digital currency, Ethereum, by nerfing Vitalik B's World of Warcraft character.
KOBLR TIL In 2005 there were so many tropical storms and hurricanes in the Atlantic that we ran out of names and had to start using the Greek alphabet. The last Hurricane was Epsilon (December), while the last tropical storm was Zeta (Janurary). Countless records were broken during this season.
MevxV TIL that Leonardo DiCaprio wasn't supposed to eat a raw bison liver during the shooting of "The Revenant." The idea was to eat a red, gelatinous pancake, but because it didn't resemble the real thing, the vegetarian decided to eat the raw liver. He later stated that he won't repeat that ever again.