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TIL The movie script for “Thirteen” was written in six days and was originally intended to be a comedy.

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D17Pe TIL that the Mongols would catapult the dead bodies of soldiers infected by the bubonic plague over city walls during sieges. This was one of the earliest known accounts of biological warfare.
5Vg7R TIL Serial killer Ed Kemper practiced behavior modification on his cellmate in prison
kJPgE TIL that very few remains have been recovered from the Battle of Waterloo. This is because the remains were likely sold and used as fertiliser.
4Bwa TIL Simon, the world’s first smartphone, was released by IBM in 1994. It cost $899, loaded new apps via external memory cards, and could last sixty minutes before requiring a recharge. IBM sold 50,000 units.
Oo8kX One night in 1987, a Canadian man named Kenneth Parks drove for 14 miles from his house to his in-laws. He then broke in and made his way upstairs, bludgeoning his mother-in-law with a crowbar that he’d gotten from the boot of his car before stabbing her repeatedly to death. He then proceeded to choke and stab his father-in-law, who miraculously survived. Parks then drove himself to the police station and turned himself in. It sounds like a fairly cut and dry murder case, but after going to trial, Kenneth Parks walked free. Thanks to a combination of a lack of motive, his consistent version of events, and data gathered from EEG readings, no charges were pressed against him because all evidence pointed to the unlikely and bewildering truth that Parks had been sleepwalking. It remains one of the most remarkable cases of homicidal sleepwalking in history.