› added 5 years ago

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TIL that during the sea recovery of the bodies from the 1986 Challenger disaster, one of the bodies disappeared underwater and the search for it was called off. Fellow astronaut Robert Crippen rented a fishing boat and continued the search himself, eventually finding and returning the body.

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ZWOv TIL that Claudette Colvin was the first person arrested for resisting bus segregation. However, since she was only 15 years old (and pregnant), the NAACP decided their secretary, Rosa Parks, would better represent the movement as the ideal segregation protester who would spark the bus boycotts.
e0456 TIL That in 1992, A North Dakotan teen, John Thompson, was home alone when he had both of his arms chopped off by a tractor in a freak farming accident. However, he still managed to get up, go inside, and dial for help via holding a pencil in his mouth. He survived.
LkYpm TIL that four people were targets for assassination the night that Lincoln was killed. John Wilkes Booth was the only one who succeeded.
5VgZp TIL about "Man Proposes, God Disposes", an 1864 oil-on-canvas painting by Edwin Landseer inspired by the search for Franklin's lost expedition. The painting, which depicts polar bears among the wreckage of the expedition, is considered haunted and a bad omen.
yQjYw TIL about Special Forces intel officer COL James N. Rowe who was a POW in the Vietnam War. Rowe spent 62 months in captivity, battled numerous diseases, solved engineering problems to disguise he was an intel officer, and escaped via helicopter by over-powering the guards.