› added 8 years ago

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TIL that after visiting the Three Mile Island nuclear plant’s accident in 1979, Jimmy Carter—trained in nuclear power from the US Navy—told his cabinet that the incident was minor. The president did not say so in public, however, to avoid offending fellow Democrats who opposed nuclear power.

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VEpD TIL that a Pakistani soldier and a Malaysian soldier also died (along with the 18 Americans) trying to rescue the crashed American helicopter crews in Mogadishu during “Black Hawk Down”.
b6Lx9 TIL that the Japanese during WW2 evacuated over 5000 troops from Kiska, Alaska in 1943 by using the dense fog to avoid the US Fleet that had come to recapture the island
QNRrd TIL of the RP FLIP, an open ocean research vessel owned by the US Office of Naval Research. It is a one of a kind vessel capable of flipping orientation from horizontal to vertical by filling/emptying an incredibly long water reservoir.
LngQ TIL: that when women were excluded from the World Anti-Slavery Convention of 1840 in London and forced to sit in a “no speaking section”, William Lloyd Garrison, the conference’s keynote speaker, refused to give his speech and sat with the women, “dominating the convention without saying a word”.
l7Ey5 TIL of ant-fungus mutualism. Leafcutter ants cut leaves and transport them back to their nests, where the leaves are used to cultivate fungus which is used as a food crop. In some advanced genera the queen ant may take a pellet of the fungus with her when she leaves to start a new colony.