AN18d TIL that in 1971, a man hijacked a Thunder Bay to Toronto flight to Havana. 30 years later, he was arrested in USA when Canadian investigators googled his name, with the sole hit being a then-recent article about his work with Bronx kids.
yVgmM TIL: In Switzerland, one of the world's base jumping hotspots, every year 1 in 60 base jumpers die. (source in german)
m1g7R TIL that in the early 20th century, the U.S. government allowed children to be sent through the mail.
DQJrV TIL Epona was a Gaulic goddess who protected horses and ponies. She became the only Celtic god worshiped in Rome, where she became the patroness of cavalry.
vPgJL TIL Crispin Glover did not reprise his role as George McFly in Back to the Future II and filed a lawsuit that created new rules for use of likeness with the SAG
J1WZl TIL that hundreds of tree seeds went to the moon with the Apollo 14 mission, resulting in Moon Trees planted all around the country during the 1970s—few of which still stand today.
pYMKA TIL Dildos were invented to make sex accessible for disabled people.
GA4EJ TIL that Coca-cola made with cane sugar winds up having no cane sugar in it. All of the sucrose converts to glucose and fructose during shipping.
16eL8 TIL: Toxoplasmosis, a virus commonly transmitted by house cats, can negatively impact male sperm count, motility and morphology, leading to infertility.
oRgaY TIL while as few as a dozen workers died from accidents during the 1826–1832 construction of Ottawa's Rideau Canal, an estimated 1,000 died due to disease (primarily malaria)
dDJP9 TIL that the first nuclear bomb test done by the United States Army, called the Trinity test in 1945, was so powerful that it melted desert sand into a unique green glass now called trinitite.
KYRaG TIL of the Cottingley Fairies. In 1917, two young English girls took photos of what they claimed were real fairies. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle then published the pics as proof of supernatural phenomena. It wasn't until the 1980s that the girls admitted the fairies were really cardboard cutouts