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TIL that in 1969, Candid Camera host Allen Funt was on a plane that was hijacked by two men demanding passage to Cuba. The passengers, having spotted Funt, believed the situation to be a hidden camera prank. He could not convince them otherwise until the plane actually landed in Cuba.

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v1wXj TIL of the ‘Mass-Observation Diarists’ who were hundreds of volunteers in the U.K. during WWII who made regular diary entries. They wrote about the intimate details of their lives as well as their thoughts and feelings about the world around them. The result was an intimate portrait of British life.
G5n4 TIL: The Speaker of the House during Watergate could have stalled the VP confirmation and impeached Nixon which would have made himself POTUS, but he concluded that, as a Democrat, he had no right to a Presidency that the American people had entrusted by election to a Republican.
P9Kw TIL: William Ellison (1790 – 1861), a freed slave, became a wealthy plantation owner, supported the Confederate States of America and held 60 of his own slaves
16bmP TIL that John Steinbeck was once forced to ask his editor for additional time due to half the manuscript of Of Mice and Men having been eaten by his Irish Setter.
ZpPY4 TIL Downtown Houston's Sam Houston Park preserves a green oasis filled with historic homes dating from the 1800s, surrounded by freeways and skycrapers. Since the 1950s, a group of Houstonians made efforts to save many fine old buildings from demolition