TIL Partway through the hour-long trial of former Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife Elena, their lawyers abandoned their defense and sided with the prosecutors. Afterwards, their execution by firing squad happened so quickly that the TV crew was unable to film the execution in full. [source, comments]

TIL that in 1910 English pranksters disguised as Ethiopian diplomats fooled the Royal Navy into giving them a tour of HMS Dreadnought. They spoke a gibberish of mostly Greek and Latin and would shout "Bunga bunga!" to express astonishment. One of them was author Virginia Woolf. [source, comments]

TIL that US troops using flash card apps accidentally revealed classified information about nuclear weapons in Europe, such as vault locations, surveillance camera positions, signs/countersigns, and duress words. [source, comments]

TIL New evidence suggests that crusaders rode horses that were the size of modern ponies. [source, comments]