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TIL John Travolta owns a Boeing 707 and his house is an airport

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mrly TIL In 1951, a scientist at Johns Hopkins Hospital created the first immortal human cell line with a tissue sample taken from a young black woman - Henrietta Lacks. Those cells, called HeLa cells, quickly became invaluable to medical research & saved millions of lives.
wLRV1 TIL At age 24, George Ellery Hale revolutionized solar observations with his invention of the spectroheliograph, making it possible to photograph the sun's prominences in full daylight. A spectroheliograph can tune-in to gases such as hydrogen and calcium, and photograph specific solar details
5Nnn TIL that Charles Darwin was one of the first scientists to demonstrate the effects of inbreeding depression, with his own children. Darwin’s wife was his first cousin.
8elEa TIL of Eastern Air Lines Flight 212 which crashed into terrain on September 11, 1974, killing 72. Among them was the VP for academic affairs of the Medical University of South Carolina and two of his sons - the father and brothers of future tv personality Stephen Colbert.
neNbG TIL an 18-month-old German Shepherd named Luna fell off a boat in the Pacific Ocean, swam 2 miles to a nearby island, and survived for 5 weeks by eating mice before she was rescued by a team of Navy staffers. She was found to be slightly under-nourished, but in perfect condition otherwise.