› added 7 months ago

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TIL about French botanist Jeanne Baret, who while posing as a man, became the first female to circumnavigate the world in the 18th century. In 1766, she joined a French expedition, collected hundreds of plant specimens, and spent the majority of the voyage hiding her identity.

pd04 TIL in 1986 a Kansas sheriff rented a camera and VCR from his local video store, filming a 90 minute sex tape with his wife. Upon returning the equipment, he inadvertently left the tape inside the VCR. Soon enough, his whole town had watched and passed around copies of “The Sheriff Rides Again”.
A7V4 TIL That 10 years after Britain no longer made vaccinations mandatory, there was an outbreak that resulted in a number of teenagers contracting diseases.
M7Nv7 TIL the curved surface of the habitat at the end of the movie Interstellar i.e. Cooper station is based on O'Neill cylinders in which two cylinders each 20miles long and 5miles in diameter rotate about their longitudinal axis thus providing centrifugal force serving as gravity.
7rQpP TIL Muhammad Ali was a conscientious objector and refused to enlist during the Vietnam War. He was sentenced to 5 years' prison but never actually went owing to appeals.
4Xbkb TIL: Naomi Parker Fraley was the most likely inspiration for the WWII poster, "We Can Do It!" The image is thought to have been inspired by a photograph taken of Fraley, operating a machine-tool at the Navel Air Station Alameda, where she worked on aircraft assembly. Fraley died in 2018, aged 96.