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TIL that the US military used to keep planes loaded with nuclear bombs in the air at all times; in 1961, the plane failed, dropping the bombs in North Carolina, though they did not detonate. This was only made public in 2013.

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v1nnj TIL that Black actor Trevor Laird was scripted to appear in a sex scene with a white girl in the film Quadrophenia, but the producers demanded he be excluded from it in case the film was shown in the southern US or South Africa.
Ajmo TIL of Tan, a patient in a French hospital who was cognizant and alert, but had paralysis in his right arm. He could only say the word, “tan”. When the man eventually died, Paul Broca examined his brain finding a lesion in the frontal lobe, a spot we now call Broca’s Area.
85YL TIL that the genetic testing of a boy who died 12,500 years ago proved that descendants of all Native Americans, including South & Central American tribes, can be traced back at least 24,000 years to a group of early Asians and Europeans who mated near Lake Baikal in what is now Siberia.
yQJw8 TIL that if you add 250ml of ethanol to 250ml of water, you get less than 500ml of liquid. This is due to strong hydrogen bonding that draws the different molecules close together, and because ethanol interferes with any open structures in the water, causing the molecules to pack closer together.
WNON TIL virtually all Middle Ages scholars believed that the Earth is spherical. The myth that people in the Middle Ages thought the earth is flat appears to date from the 17th century as part of the campaign by Protestants against Catholic teaching.