› added 8 years ago

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TIL that a 23 year old French con artist impersonated and assumed the identity of a 16 year old missing Texas boy, living with the boy’s family for months, despite retaining his French accent and having different colored eyes from the missing teen.

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VMKap TIL: In 2010 competitive swimming banned polyurethane suits in swimming that could reduce drag up to 8%, after records were broken in droves. The thin layer of fabric was made up of tiny bubbles that trapped air and actually made the swimmer float higher in the water.
eYKg TIL that a health benefit of roller coasters is that the centripetal force can help pass kidney stones
M77Va TIL the Irish Guards have had an Irish Wolfhound as a mascot since 1902. The current one is called Seamus
Eg9yV TIL the first programmable digital computer was COLOSSUS, built for code breaking during WW2. Due to secrecy, it wasn’t revealed for decades
JYxjj TIL that during the Vietnam War, USAF Major Philip W. Handley achieved the world's only supersonic air-to-air gun kill, when he shot down a North Vietnamese MiG-19 while flying F-4 Phantom and using F-4's 20mm cannon, at 1.2 mach (800 kts).