› added 5 years ago

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TIL that German film director Werner Herzog nearly took LANSA Flight 508, but canceled at the last minute. The plane was struck by lightning, killing 91 of 92 crew members and passengers. The lone survivor was 17-year-old Juliane Koepcke, whose story was told in Herzog's documentary Wings of Hope.

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9KK7 TIL Holy Roman Emperor Charles V was one of the first people to propose creating a Panama Canal
78Elx TIL that more than 2,500 Fairey Barracudas were delivered to the Royal Navy during the 1940s, but none were preserved. The Fleet Air Arm Museum has collected components since the 1970s- including wreckage- in order to rebuild one from original parts.
R6n8 TIL a Mossad hit squad once carried out an assassination clad only in briefs. They did this to keep their clothes free of blood. The target was Herberts Cukurs, AKA “The Butcher of Riga”, a Latvian Nazi. In Brazil, he was lured to a house by an undercover Mossad agent, then killed by the hit squad.
eON5 TIL that in 1872 the ship, Mary Celeste, was found abandoned in the middle of calm seas, with one lifeboat and its entire crew of experienced sailors missing. All the food and personal belongings on board were found in place. The mystery has yet to been solved.
jNEdv TIL Tetris has an official sequel. Called "Welltris", it was developed by the original creator 5 years after the creation of Tetris, retains that game's falling-block puzzle gameplay but extends the pit into three dimensions while the blocks remain two-dimensional, with the board viewed from above.