› added 10 years ago

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TIL the 10 year old singer of “I Want A Hippopotamus For Christmas” got her wish and donated it to the local zoo

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via reddit.com

ADK7B TIL in WWII The Lockheed-Vega plant in Burbank was completely hidden below a blanket of Camouflage. It gave the appearance of a suburban area, rubber vehicles & quaint, peaceful neighborhoods, all painted on canvas to avoid bombing by the Japanese.
Ooyv6 TIL that Geoffrey Tandy, a marine biologist who specialised in cryptogams (algae, moss, etc.), was recruited to a secret British codebreaking organization during WWII because the Ministry of Defence confused “cryptogamist” with “cryptogramist.” Tandy ended up helping to crack the Enigma code anyway.
5Yxr TIL that the filming of the Lord of the Rings trilogy pumped roughly $200,000,000 into the New Zealand economy.
7NB7 TIL that one of the only senators ever assassinated was Leo Ryan who was killed by Jim Jones’s cult members while they were in the process of committing mass suicide. He had come to investigate reports from concerned family members.
69X9l TIL That 1965 A patent was awarded for an “Apparatus for Facilitating the Birth of a Child by Centrifugal Force”