nMDB TIL London has $248 billion in gold stored in sprawling vaults that contain a fifth of all gold held by the world’s governments.
6nDX TIL the standard measurement of the kg for the past 127 years is ‘Le Grand K’, a platinum and iridium cylinder that was forged in 1879 and currently resides inside a vault in France.
Gd44 TIL Three years before Robert E. Lee was born, his mother, Anne Hill Carter, was thought to have died from yellow fever, and was placed in the family vault until a caretaker heard a faint voice coming out of the coffin three days later.
DlPe TIL that there are hidden wine cellars that run beneath the expanse of the Brooklyn Bridge. Though no longer in use, they were created to help supplement the building costs as merchants would pay to store expensive bottles in the always cool vaults.
8nxZ TIL of the Grandpa Gang, a group of senior citizens who broke into a formerly impregnable bank vault in England and made off with over $20 million.
JkAl TIL That the Bank of England only owns two of the ~400,000 gold bars in its vaults.
dOnK TIL in 1974 a Washington lawyer circulated a theory that ‘elites’ had raided all the gold from the United States Bullion Depository in Fort Knox. Members of the media were given access in order refute the theory. It is the only time a member of the public has been allowed inside the vault.
Aeen TIL There is a vault in the arctic that stores over 860k different varieties of food crop seeds as an insurance policy for the world’s food supply
jlDR TIL there is an underground vault containing every Lego set ever
Xd0D Til Sergey Bubka broke the pole vault world record in 1984 then kept breaking it every year after by as small an amount as possible for the reward money.