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TIL about the "Tanganyika-Laughter Epidemic". A student in 1962 in Tanzania started laughing in a school in Kashasha. The laughter quickly spread to hundreds of people,causing schools to close for months. Researchers believe it was caused by stress, social tensions. No official explanation was given

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via reddit.com

xwAB TIL a guy stranded in the desert dismantled his broken down car and made a working motorcycle out of it.
8apKX TIL a SwissAir flight was recording a documentary when an engine failed. The film crew was able to capture the calm and cool of the pilots while they turned the engine off, informed passengers, dumped fuel, ate chocolate and took a coffee break.
pYdG4 TIL Australia has a public collection programme for funnel-web spiders. The public are asked to catch the deadliest spider in the world (capable of killing a child in 15 minutes, and has fangs that can pierce toenails) and take them to designated points. They are milked for the anti-venom programme.
V478 TIL during the recording of Michael Jackson’s ‘Beat It’, the sound of Eddie Van Halen’s guitar caused the monitor speaker in the control room to catch fire during the solo, causing one engineer to exclaim, “This must be REALLY good.”
jl5j TIL the satirist Willie Rushton once pranked the Victoria and Albert Museum by placing a label next to a plug socket that read “Plug hole designed by Hans Plug (b. 1908)” which remained in place for a full year, even fooling the cleaning staff who began using an extension cable.