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TIL: the “selfie stick” was once considered so unnecessary that it was included in a Chindōgu book consisting of 101 Un-Useless Japanese Inventions by Kenji Kawakami. Chindōgu are things that are almost completely useless, but not quite.

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via reddit.com

5VM09 TIL that Isadore Stessel was the only US Navy Airship casualty of WWII. Stessel was part of the crew on K-74 when it attacked and rendered the U-134 unable to submerge. Stessel was then killed by a shark moments before rescue the following day.
OL4a TIL the spacecraft Solar Probe Plus which is scheduled to be launched in 2018 will achieve a speed of 432,000 mph, making it the fastest man made object ever built.
wK16 TIL that Annie Oakley, famous sharp shooter, was falsely reported to have been arrested for cocaine use. She then filed 55 lawsuits against accuser(s), and won 54/55.
loQb7 TIL, that nearly 2 million people from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania joined in hands for call of a freedom from USSR
N7BPE TIL that although the Chernobyl nuclear-power-plant had a meltdown in 1986 and had rendered the land around it uninhabitable, the remaining reactors of the facility remained in normal operation and generated power until the year 2000.