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TIL: The Golden Gate Bridge's famed color, "International Orange" selected by architect Irving Morrow for aesthetics and for visibility in fog, won out over the US Navy's preferred color scheme. The Navy wanted it black with yellow safety stripes --the better for ships to see it.

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x6rr1 TIL that part of the reason the Mafia is so powerful in southern Italy is because Italian judges who score well on exams get to choose their post; those sent to work in Calabria usually request to be transferred right away.
EgmpP TIL Texaco illegally sold oil to Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War. The company was fined $20,000 but would continued to sell the regime oil until the end of the war.
p8RRG TIL in 1951, Natalie Carbone Mangini became the first female scientist at Westinghouse. They meant to hire a man but they misread her resume and gave her an interview when she showed up. As a radiochemist, she worked on the world's first full-scale atomic reactor and the first nuclear submarine.
1aMLd TIL The magician Harry Houdini had a younger brother named Theodore Hardeen. Hardeen was also a magician and billed himself as the "brother of Houdini." Hardeen was the first magician to conceive escaping from a straitjacket in full view of the audience.
JELl TIL the professional wrestler, Big Show, quit football after his freshman year in high school, because of disputes with the coach. He continued to support the team by joining the cheerleading squad, partly from spite. He later called it “the greatest experience of my life”