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TIL: Loofahs are a vegetable

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a16y TIL the US Navy shot down a civilian airliner en route to Dubai from Tehran in 1988, killing 290 people, in Iranian airspace and waters.
OopVg TIl the US strategic petroleum reserves are stored in underground caverns carved out of salt. Salt does not react with the oil and is self-healing. The plastic behavior of salt will cause it to naturally close fractures or gaps and prevent any leakage.
YpvYv Til The Secret Service tried to paint the White House Camoflage
VMawp TIL of the Winterberg tunnel; which , during WW1 was sealed shut by French artillery fire trapping the 270 German soldier inside. Over the next six days, as oxygen ran out, they either suffocated or took their own lives. Some asked comrades to kill them. The tunnel has just been discovered.
XER8Q TIL that although they failed to find missing pilot Steve Fossett for years, in the days following his disappearance, they DID find EIGHT other previously unidentified crash sites.