› added 4 months ago

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TIL about Alex Zanardi, an Italian racing driver. In 2001, as a result of a crash during a race, he lost both of his legs. After the crash, he took up handcycling, a form of paralympic cycling, and won gold medals at the 2012 and 2016 Paralympics

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Qr4E TIL In 1959, The winner of a city council election in Sao Paulo was Cacareco, a rhino at a local zoo. Its candidacy was traced back to students who had printed up 200,000 ballots with her name, and were all legitimately cast by voters, one of whom commented: “Better to elect a rhino than an ass.”
MYZV TIL in ‘92, a doctor was accused of raping a woman while she was sedated in his office. He was cleared after DNA tests did not match. It was later discovered that he foiled the DNA test by implanting a tube of another man’s blood under his skin.
e0By5 TIL that during the Cold War, Chairman Mao held meetings in his swimming pool to embarrass Nikola Khrushchev, who had to wear a floaty as he couldn’t swim. Khrushchev felt insulted and the incident furthered the deterioration of relations between the Soviet Union and China
BroGx TIL there's been proposals to terraform Venus for a human colony since the 1960's, such as thinning the dense atmosphere to reduce the 450 °C surface temperature, setting up a system of orbital mirrors to give it Earth-like day/night cycle, and colliding it with an ice moon to fill it with water.
R768 TIL that in the “Plato’s Stepchildren” episode of Star Trek William Shatner and Nichelle Nichols deliberately flubbed every take of a scene where they did NOT kiss, thus forcing the episode to go out with the kiss intact.