› added 12 years ago

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TIL that in addition to saving a passenger train of people at the expense of his own life, earlier in his career Casey Jones saved the life of a young girl by standing on the moving train’s cow-catcher and picking the girl up off the track

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OXbL TIL Scientists say human greenhouse gas emissions have canceled the next ice age, and that pre-industrial human modifications of the climate through agriculture, fires and deforestation might have just barely staved it off.
9DNr TIL Russian Railways president Vladimir Yakunin wants to build a bridge across the Bering Strait from Russia to Alaska. This would make possible an almost 13,000 mile road trip from New York to London.
oBmPE TIL Despite all the "Florida Man..." headlines, Florida doesn't necessarily have more weird people doing weird things than other states. They just have strong Sunshine Laws that make it super easy for journalists to mine records like police reports in order to write those stories.
4XkR5 TIL The three space shuttle main engines generate the maximum equivalent of about 37 million horsepower. The fuel pump alone delivers as much as 71,000 horsepower, the oxygen pump delivers about 23,000.
jNAaQ TIL that Steve Carter, 35, found out he was a missing child. Carter, who was adopted at 4, found an age-progression image through missing children. He discovered he'd been kidnapped by his birth mother and placed in an orphanage. His biological father reported him missing over three decades earlier.