› added 7 years ago

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TIL: WWII aircraft designers had selection bias by analyzing returning planes to increase armor on the damaged areas. Abraham Wald pointed the craft didn’t need the armor to survive, and proposed armor on the undamaged sections as hits to these areas must have destroyed the craft not returning.

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R5dva TIL William the Conqueror had a son named Richard who was killed in a freak accident as a teenager, struck by an overhanging branch while riding.
ne1wr TIL that if New York were split into its five component boroughs, four of them (Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx) would be among the ten most populous cities in the US.
oBNmK TIL in 1991 After Eric Clapton’s 4 year old son died after falling 53 stories from an open skyscraper window Clapton fled to an island and worked on his music for a year as a recluse. While there he wrote and dedicated the song ‘Tears in Heaven’ to his son. The song went on to win 3 Grammys.
jmkv TIL that in the Victorian era, people used rocking bathtubs–literally, tubs of water that could be sloshed back and forth–to recreate the feel of the ocean in their homes
Lk74V TIL Dorothy Stang, an American nun who dedicated her life to preserving the Amazon rainforest in Brazil. She helped the poor by teaching them how to harvest products from the forest and sought to protect peasants from gangs working for farmers. She was murdered by criminals hired by a rancher.