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TIL Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt is the only scientist to have explored the Moon’s surface. Because he was not a pilot, as all previous astronauts were, Dr. Schmitt attended a 53-week course in flight training, logging more than 2,100 hours flying time

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Bg0ND TIL in 1862 John Langdon Down was the first to describe a distinct mental disability, calling it "Mongoloidism" due to patients' thin eye shape and shorter stature. Now known as Down Syndrome, was discovered in the 1950s to be caused by the presence a third copy of chromosome 21.
GOa5 TIL of Frank Nelson Cole. At a 1903 meeting of the American Mathematical Society, Cole—while remaining completely silent—showed on a chalkboard an important new proof by, among other things, calculating 193,707,721 × 761,838,257,287 by hand. He sat down after an hour to a standing ovation.
xDmw TIL that the green iguana has a ‘third-eye’ called a parietial eye, in the middle of its forehead. This does not function in the same way as its two side eyes, but enables it to detect movement, especially from above, to help it avoid predators.
e0EDb TIL That one of the only top government officials who opposed Japanese internment during World War II was...J. Edgar Hoover.
QJ1r6 TIL that after the Salem Witch Trials, the town realised that they had made a mistake and compensated the families of the people they had convicted. More than 200 people had been accused of witchcraft, and 20 of them had been executed.