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TIL In the 1940s, cars were painted with a hand-spraying technique that would accumulate overspray, which would build up and be baked repeatedly in the ovens used to cure the paint on the vehicles. These paint clumps (known as Fordite) were salvaged, cut, and polished for jewelry.

e0M0b TIL: The Ford Thunderbird is named after a legendary creature from Native American mythology. A massive eagle that would eat cows and people.
awGDy TIL of a sea sponge that has a skeleton made of glass which has better strength, flexibility and fracture resistance than manufactured optic fibre.
x6kr5 TIL about Gary DeVore, a screenwriter, who disappeared in 1997 while night driving from Santa Fe, NM to Santa Barbara, CA. A year after disappearing, Devore and his Ford Explorer were found in an aqueduct in Palmdale, CA. Devore's hands, script and gun were missing. His death remains a mystery.
l7MLG TIL about composer Claude Vivier’s murder in 1983, which some believe was actually an elaborate suicide. Vivier was stabbed to death by a man he picked up at a bar. Later an unfinished score of Vivier’s was found in which the protagonist Claude is stabbed to death by a man he meets in the subway.
ADoYB TIL that the US Navy publicly denied what is now believed to be an urban legend. Allegedly, a US Navy battleship or aircraft carrier encountered what was ostensibly another vessel and the Captain instructed it to change course. The response was, 'I'm a lighthouse. Your call.'