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TIL Mark Twain Was Born and Died in the Same Years That Halley’s Comet Flew By the Earth

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nekPY TIL, The Russian novel We (1920-21) by Yevgeny Zamyatin is considered one of the grandfathers of the dystopian genre and influenced George Orwell's 1984. "Zamyatin's influence on Orwell is beyond dispute...1984 shares so many features with We that there can be no doubt about its general debt to it."
5VVQp TIL about the Faraday School Kidnapping that occurred in 1972 in Victoria, Australia, where two men kidnapped a teacher her six students for a ransom of $1,000,000. The kidnapping inspired the HBO movie, "Fortress", which portrayed the kidnappers as gun-wielding maniacs wearing Halloween masks.
7roXZ TIL that before artificial dentures were invented, teeth were pulled from dead soldiers to make dentures for the rich!
1ajlV TIL that engineers from six New York City television stations died in the 9/11 attacks because the transmission facilities were in the building and they had to keep broadcasting despite the ongoing disaster. They kept the stations on the air until the towers' collapse.
rlXW TIL in 1984 five Argentinians crossed the Atlantic. The boat was a raft of 13.6 meters long by 5.8 meters wide, built of logs, rudderless and with only a candle. The aim was to prove that 3500 years before Christopher Columbus, African sailors may have accidentally reached the shores of America.