› added 12 years ago

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TIL that during World War 2, US troops would use the word “lollapalooza” to root out Japanese spies. Anyone who pronounced the first two syllables as “rorra” was gunned down on sight.

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lBdK TIL 500,00 Americans faced a low-tech Y2K when they pre-ordered headstones with “19-” inscribed for their death date, then lived past the year 2000.
RWWa TIL that Romania shipped 93.4 TONES of gold to Rusia in 1916 so that Russia would safe keep the Romanian Treasure in the Kremlin until the end of the war. And, as of 2014, they gave back only 33 kg of it.
rRnVy TIL GPS originated after American scientists scrambled to track Sputnik.
xV0Mg TIL Iran's Supreme Leader issued an order calling for the assassination of Salman Rushdie, a British writer accused of blaspheming Islam. While he was not killed, the Japanese translator of the book was murdered and two other translators survived murder attempts
4kkNN TIL the famous "Scopes Monkey Trial" of 1925 was deliberately conceived as a publicity stunt for the town of Dayton, Tennessee. Residents of the town held a protest and threatened to boycott Chattanooga when the trial was initially to be moved there.