› added 5 years ago

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TIL that Crocodile Dundee was inspired by Ron Ansell, an Australian buffalo hunter & crocodile poacher. He sued Paul Hogan for profits of the films, but lost & was bitter about it for the rest of his life. He was killed in a police shootout on 8/3/99.

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JYXw4 TIL fire will burn in a spherical shape In microgravity environments, like space, because without gravity oxygen diffuses with random oxygen molecules drifting into the fire. Absent the upward flow of hot air, fires in microgravity will stay spherical and small
4B4o TIL when someone asked British PM Margaret Thatcher if she was concerned about Germany beating England in football, she said “No, we already beat them twice this century at their national game.”
N8MJ TIL that the deepest layer of the ocean, the hadopelagic zone, is named after the realm of Hades, the Greek underworld. This ranges from 6000m (3.7 miles) deep, down to the very lowest reaches. Populations are sparsest here, and are believed to be sustained by marine snow and thermal vents.
b6gJ4 TIL since 1998, officials at the Library of Congress have been looking for the exact books Thomas Jefferson sold to the library which were later lost in a fire in 1851. They’ve located over 4,000 exact replacements with the same publisher, date, and edition as Jefferson's 4,324 original volumes.
QRX9 TIL that in 1896, a serial killer due to be executed was subpoenaed to give evidence in another trial, but it was decided that her testimony would be inadmissible, as she was considered legally dead upon receiving her sentence.