› added 4 years ago

41

TIL Carlos Hathcock, an American sniper during the Vietnam war crawled over 1,500 yards to shoot PAVN General. It took him 4 days and 3 nights inch by inch. He fired a single shot killing the General and crawled back undetected.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

GAQJN TIL Randy Rhoads died in a plane piloted by their tour bus driver that he took without permission after stopping to have their bus serviced near an airstrip. He made one trip transporting people but kept "buzzing" (flying right above) the bus to scare passengers until he flew too low and clipped it.
X060j TIL some U.S. police departments have adopted policies of rejecting new applicants if they score too high on their IQ tests
XELoQ TIL about the holiday paradox and why time seems to go by more quickly as we age and when we are having fun. Our brain encodes new experiences, but not familiar ones, into memory, and our retrospective judgment of time is based on how many new memories we create over a certain period.
xVl1D TIL during the Crosby by-election (UK) in 1981, a 22-year old candidate legally changed his name from John Desmond Lewis to Tarquin Fin-tim-lin-bin-whin-bim-lim-bus-stop-F'tang-F'tang-Olé-Biscuitbarrel, in homage to a character from a Monty Python’s Flying Circus sketch.
VBKp8 TIL the philosopher, David Hume, served as secretary to general James St Clair in a planned invasion of Canada, which is soon cancelled; then they invade France, where several comic events ensue, and the military career of Hume end ingloriously, without any significant military achievements.