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TIL Atom-bomb designer Hans Bethe fled Nazi Germany in 1933 and joined Cornell University where he stayed on as Professor until he died at 98 in 2005, the last of the giants of Los Alamos. The weapon’s reality “was worse than we expected,” Bethe recalled

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KOVnG TIL Alfred George Hinds today remains remembered as one of the most celebrated British prison break artists. During his life he managed to escape from not one, but three heavily guarded prisons, all in attempt to prove his innocence to the English legal system.
jNl4X TIL about Yoshie Shiratori. He escaped Japanese prison 4 times. The first time he picked some simple locks, the next time he climbed up a wall and broke a skylight, the next time he dislocated his joints to escape through a small hole, and lastly he dug a hole with a bowl. Every time was different.
jNPMX TIL that Steven Spielberg wanted to direct a James Bond film but was turned down by Eon Productions. When he told this to George Lucas, Lucas said he had a film that was just like it but even better. The story was about an archaeologist named Indiana.
vPXP4 TIL that during the American Civil War, agents of the Confederacy attempted to spread yellow fever in the North (using contaminated blankets) in one of the earliest recorded examples of biological warfare.
LQVmP TIL one of the quietest rooms in the world is the anechoic chamber at Microsoft's headquarters. People can only handle being in the room for less than an hour because the only sounds come from your own body (heartbeat, bones grinding, etc.), and it becomes very disorienting.