› added 6 years ago

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TIL: A Russian man saved the world by ignoring the commands of a missile detection system. His gut instincts were correct. it was a false alarm. There were no nukes coming from the United States. It was some clouds that fooled the sensors.

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YY7Z TIL of a 12 year old boy, Hunter Scott, who in the course of doing a history project for school, found enough evidence to lead to a Congressional investigation that ended up exonerating a US Navy ship’s captain for wrongdoing, 55 years after his court martial.
v1el8 TIL that Andrew Jackson’s parrot cursed so loudly and for so long during the former president’s funeral that the wicked bird had to be removed from the service as shocked mourners watched.
rNNK1 TIL Thomas Wise was a keen collector of first editions in original condition dating back to Elizabethan era and given an honorary M.A. by University of Oxford. He parlayed his reputation as a collector of books into a career in creating and selling forgeries of nearly 300 works of English authors.
4kOOJ TIL about Project West Ford, a Cold War project done by MIT on behalf of the US military. It was an attempt to create an artificial ionosphere around the Earth by launching millions of copper needles into orbit.
epKo4 TIL that in 2015, a man named Mark Haub, a professor of nutrition at Kansas State University, went on a 'convenience store diet' for 10 weeks, eating mostly Twinkies, Oreos, and Doritos. He lost 27 pounds and improved his cholesterol and blood pressure levels by limiting his calorie intake.