› added 7 years ago

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TIL in 1970 a 24-year-old doctorate student in computer planning filed suit seeking to void the Vietnam draft lottery on the grounds that the selection process did not produce truly random results, resulting in birth dates later in the year being drawn disproportionately early, and vice versa.

4Xy4o TIL while it is accepted that Big Ben was named after a man called Benjamin, it is not known whether that person was politician Sir Benjamin Hall or boxer Benjamin Caunt.
PAJO TIL the reason the Gamecube and Wii cannot play standard DVD discs is because the consoles spin the media at a constant angular velocity (the disc spins at the same speed regardless of the laser’s position) versus a constant linear velocity as with standard drives/players.
LlKm TIL that a then 12-year-old girl was the sole survivor of a plane that crashed straight into the Indian Ocean. She was rescued after spending 9 hours in rough, shark-infested waters clinging to life on a piece of debris from the plane.
0daZv TIL that, thanks to the influence of Anheuser-Busch, Missouri has some of the loosest liquor laws in the US. Open containers in vehicles, drinking in public, and public intoxication are generally legal; gas stations and pharmacies can sell hard liquor; and bars can double as liquor stores.
VBmDm TIL that The Dead Zone, in which Christopher Walken, the clairvoyant protagonist, attempts and fails to assassinate a presidential candidate with a rifle at a campaign rally, was written by Stephen King.