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TIL of Charlie Walker, the first non-government individual to fly into space. After NASA deemed him unqualified and rejected his 1978 application for astronaut, he co-developed a space bound device which required him to accompany it. Walker flew into space three times with the device he co-patented.

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ANoel TIL that the Washington Territory (soon to be Washington state) was originally going to be called Columbia but the name was deemed too similar to the District of Columbia. District of Columbia was ironically renamed to Washington D.C. before Washington gained statehood.
OGDGe TIL Not even 20% of japanese people have passports!
lo7OA Yes, but no more than listening to Justin Bieber. The misconception that there's something unique about Mozart's ability to increase brainpower began in 1993, with a paper in Nature. Neurobiologists Gordon Shaw, Frances Rauscher and Katherine Ky of the University of California at Irvine found that students who listened to 10 minutes of a Mozart sonata demonstrated a temporary increase in spatial-temporal reasoning, as measured by an IQ test.
Lx59 TIL that a gargoyle can only be called that name if it has a spout and was created to divert water away from the building. Non-functioning, ornamental ones should be called a chimera, grotesque, or boss.
xVMEk TIL the world's largest retail store (by square footage) is Shinsegae Centum City Department Store in Busan, South Korea, with 3.163 million square feet.