› added 9 years ago

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TIL that a 21-year old Sacramento college student boarded the wrong plane in Los Angeles and found himself en route to Aukland, New Zealand instead of Oakland, CA. The accents of the airline staff resulted in the word “Aukland” being pronounced as “Oakland” which confused the flyer.

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via reddit.com

B5Dx TIL that George Orwell, author of 1984 and Animal Farm among others, was a Spanish Civil War veteran. He served with the Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification, an anti-Stalinist communist international brigade fighting for the Loyalist (Republican) faction.
4X5ZJ TIL that the smallest ‘country’ in the world are actually two buildings with extraterritorial status in Rome represented as the Sovereign Military Order of Malta; the Order has existed for almost a thousand years, they have diplomatic relations with 110 countries and are observers to the UN
0wkBL TIL about Picher, Oklahoma. A town that had to be abandoned after it was discovered that an old lead mine was poisoning the residents. The real nail in the coffin came when an F-4 tornado hit in 2008. Today, the town sits completely empty.
v1oB4 TIL Shia LaBeouf came under heavy fire for plagiarizing his directorial debut in 2012. When he publicly apologized to the original artist, Dan Clowes, people discovered that Shia's apology was itself plagiarized verbatim off a Yahoo Answers post from 2010.
6Rym TIL A 22 year old was shot 6 times in the back in Sept. for carrying a fake katana (in an open carry state). Police claimed that he lunged at them which was later heavily disputed by video evidence, however they got off with no charges. No riots ensued and so it did not make national news.