› added 5 years ago

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TIL, Joseph Beyrle, an American Paratrooper, fought for both the US and the Soviet Union in WW2. He was captured in Normandy, sent to a POW Camp, escaped, joined the Red Army and liberated the camp he had just escaped from. He later met Marshal Zhukov and won the Purple Heart for his Service.

rJN0 TIL that while filming The Wizard of Oz, the actor playing the Wizard noticed the label “L Frank Baum” in a ragged coat that had been purchased at a thrift shop for his role. The coat had been sewn for the author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and was presented to his widow upon the films completion.
9Yklm TIL of Mamihlapinatapai, the "most succinct word and hardest to translate" that means "a look shared by two people, each wishing that the other would initiate something that they both desire but which neither wants to begin."
bV40 TIL that Boeing plane models are always 7X7 not because of the Lucky number 7 but because the 700 division was in charge of transport aircraft after WWII. They started with 707 and kept the pattern from there.
jNvwX TIL Greek painter Zeuxis, one of the first artists to use realistic imagery, had a contest with his contemporary Parrhasius. Zeuxis drew grapes so flawless that birds came to peck at them, but Parrhasius drew curtains and asked him to pull it aside, which fooled him since they were actually painted.
jNwXa TIL that William Wallace ("Braveheart") was born around 550 years before the kilt was invented. That means it would be more accurate to dress William Shakespeare (1564) in a spacesuit (1961) (only around 400 years difference).