› added 8 years ago

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TIL During World War II, an RAF gunner Nicholas Alkemade fell through 18,000 feet without a parachute and survived without injuries. He was captured by the Germans, who issued him a commemorative certificate for his miraculous survival after verifying the details of his ‘story’.

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awRrN TIL Almost 500 years ago, an African man Yasuke arrived in Japan. He would go on to become the first foreign-born man to achieve the status of a samurai warrior and the only black person to achieve this status.
8eR5Z TIL Hans Christian Ørsted made the first connection between electricity and magnetism, which brought about a communications revolution due to its application to the electric telegraph
xVG0b TIL that Baltimore has a higher murder rate than Honduras or El Salvador, and 10% of the population is addicted to heroin
wme1 TIL Sweden is so good at recycling, it has run out of garbage and now must import garbage from Norway to fuel its energy programs.
QplL TIL in the 50s a white man disguised himself as a black man and traveled to some of the most racially segregated parts of America. He found blatant acts of racism almost everywhere he went, and published a book about his experiences called Black Like Me.