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This is your occasional reminder that until 1993 the existence of Post Office Tower in London was an official state secret

Despite it being 177 metres tall, in central London, and having both a revolving restaurant and a gift shop

@witchfynder_finder yep, the fact it existed was classified and people did indeed get done under section 2 of the official secrets act for gathering information about it

And yes, it does indeed have both a revolving restaurant which was open to the public on the 34th floor and a gift shop

The only reason it's not classified any more was because an MP used parliamentary privilege to announce that it does exist because the fact it was classified was fucking ridiculous

@troubleMoney I honestly have more questions now but I'm so gobsmacked by the whole thing I don't even know which ones to ask =P

@witchfynder_finder I'm sure it's part of why SIS had no problem with their headquarters being shown in the Bond films

they realised that it was a waste of time trying to keep a location like that classified when every cab driver in London knew where it was

@witchfynder_finder @troubleMoney It was mostly a commercial telecom place, but it had some military communications equipment in the mix. That made it a Military Comms Site and and thus automatically top secret; which UK bureaucracy being what it is, nobody bothered with an exception to...

Also the _details_ of the military equipment were actual-for-reals top secret, which is why people got in trouble for gathering info even though its basic existence was the biggest un-secret ever.

@troubleMoney this just screams "they forgot to do the paperwork" or something

@troubleMoney that's wonderful.
And until 2013, it wasn't explicitly confirmed that women could wear pants in France (when not riding a horse or a bike, that is). 😄
liberation.fr/france/2013/02/0

@glowingskull in addition to it being used for standard civilian stuff it was also part of "Backbone", a military communications network designed to withstand nuclear attacks

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