› added 5 years ago

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TIL about Clarence Elkins, a man who was falsely convicted of murdering his mother-in-law. He believed that the killer was Earl Mann, a local criminal, also in the same jail. In prison, he stole one of Mann's cigarettes and sent it to his wife. After DNA testing showed a match, Elkins was released.

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wLX81 TIL during the first combat usage of the American Sidewinder missile in 1958, a dud hit an enemy plane and became lodged without exploding. The pilot returned to base, allowing Soviet engineers to study it and reverse-engineer a nearly identical missile for their own use.
NXVnM TIL Sour Patch Kids are shaped as Martians and were initially called "Mars Men" back in the 70s to capitalize on the space enthusiasm of the time.
0wZbR TIL that there was a store at Walt Disney World called "Jessica's" that only sold Jessica Rabbit merchandise
GM74 TIL that in 1984 a Beluga whale named Noc learned to warble in a human voice that was so convincing it fooled a diver into thinking someone was shouting at him to get out of the water!
b9Vwj TIL that a factor in the fall of Constantinople was a huge cannon called Basilica that was over 8m long, .75m in diameter, and could fire 270kg stone balls over 1.5km. Basilica took 3 hours to reload, and collapsed under its own recoil after 6 weeks of use. It took 60 oxen and 400 men to transport.