› added 11 years ago

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TIL that British Rail once held up a train for 20 minutes so that a distraught man could get to his mother in hospital before she died.

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via reddit.com

yVAPv TIL that the RMS Carpathia, the ship that picked up the Titanic survivors, was sunk by a German submarine six years later.
ZpvBY TIL that in the 19th century, a Portuguese writer was imprisoned and disowned for adultery. While in prison, he wrote a book featuring a character who commits similar crimes. After his death, this book made him very famous and a national hero.
xV8OB TIL in 1960 a Russian man with a bomb tried to hijack Trans Australia Airlines Flight 408. The co-pilot punched him in the face and ripped the wires off the bomb saving everyone on board.
v1enr TIL that multiple Star Wars lead actors have struggled with a habit of making their own sound effects for fight scenes - to the point where multiple takes needed to be re-shot because you could see the actors making lightsaber noises.
PNyg TIL Samuel Coleridge perceived the entire course of Kubla Khan, a poem, in a dream, but was interrupted by a visitor from Porlock while in the process of writing it. Kubla Khan was never completed. Thus “Person from Porlock” is an allusion to intruders who disrupt creativity.