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TIL Dr.Seuss wrote an adult book, but due to his inability to draw a sexy female it was a flop

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69ppJ TIL during the 1995 Coupe Aéronautique Gordon Bennett, (ballooning’s oldest aeronautical race) a balloon was shot down by a Belarusian helicopter gunship, killing the two men piloting it
KYWQQ TIL the White Star Line sent grieving Titanic families a bill—demanding a £20 “deposit” (≈£2,100 today) to ship their loved one’s body home, and saying that if they couldn’t pay, the company would simply bury the corpse in Halifax and mail them a photo of the grave.
8ajDX TIL that the last surviving wife of a Civil War veteran died just 6 months ago. They married in 1936 while she was 17 and he was 93. This practice was common so that young women could receive the veteran's Civil War pension ($73.13/month). She died in December 2020 at the age of 101.
won91 TIL BBC developed a written form for West African Pidgin. Pidgin has 75 million speakers in West Africa but did not have a standard written form prior to this. E.g. ,"Wen be Eid al-Fitr and how dem dey decide di date?"
b9b4p TIL that Cayman Island is just 260 Sq. Km (approx 16 km*16 km) with a population of nearly 65,000 has nearly 100,000 registered companies with a ratio of 1.5 companies per person. Caymanians have the highest standard of living in the Caribbean. Their currency = 1.2 US $.