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TIL WW2 Black Sheep Squadron member Bill Case cheated death by randomly lowering the seat in his cockpit. In battle, a bullet from a Japanese Zero hit his cockpit and bloodied his scalp. If he had been sitting an inch higher, he would be dead. He went on to live another 52 years.

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VMlRB TIL E.T. was originally written as a horror movie in which aliens kill others simply by the touch of a long, bony finger. Spielberg changed his mind and decided to make it a family-friendly film and later repurposed the horror concept for "Poltergiest".
XEnM6 TIL that Alaska is not only the most northern and western state in the US, but also the most eastern state due to the fact that the Aleutian Islands cross the 180° longitude line
R5d4l TIL about the Potoooooooo horse, a famous 18th-century Thoroughbred racehorse who, as the story goes, got his name from the stable boy who misheard the name "Potatoes" and heard it literally as "pot-eight-o's" and wrote it out as such. The owner found it so funny that he kept the name.
KaB4 TIL the Hubble was ridiculed because a mirror was off by less than 1/50th the thickness of a human hair.
eZkk TIL during WWII, the U.S. government introduced a baseball-shaped grenade designed to be easy for young American men to throw. However, design flaws led to frequent premature detonations, and the grenade was retired in 1945, having caused more casualties to American soldiers than enemy troops.