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TIL After crashing during the 1984 Dallas Grand Prix, Ayrton Senna's excuse was that the "wall must have moved". Nobody believed him, until he insisted it was checked. The wall had moved less than half an inch nearer the track as a result of an earlier crash.

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xVnJg TIL Physicist Freeman Dyson, who died in late February, was the first to propose advanced aliens would likely build "Dyson Spheres" around their home stars, which are giant shells that capture most of a star's energy to help power an entire interplanetary civilization.
Wk6O4 TIL Howard Cossell, a well-regarded sports commentator, gave up on commentating for boxing after a referee would not call a brutally one-sided fight.
E1dYp TIL that a female Giant Pacific Octopus can lay 50,000 eggs. She quits eating and spends six months slowly dying as she tends to and protects them. On average, only 2 out of the 50,000 baby octopuses survive.
wgx8 TIL On 31 March 1970, a group of left-wing extremists from the Japanese Red Army Faction hijacked a plane with samurai swords and demanded to be taken to North Korea.
N7B0E TIL that Richard Branson of Virgin Airlines has spent less than 1/10th of the $3 billion that he pledged to commit to fighting global change in 2006.