› added 9 years ago

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TIL Almost all animals and plants synthesize their own vitamin C, but humans cannot because the gene for this enzyme is defective

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78Elx TIL that more than 2,500 Fairey Barracudas were delivered to the Royal Navy during the 1940s, but none were preserved. The Fleet Air Arm Museum has collected components since the 1970s- including wreckage- in order to rebuild one from original parts.
69PZY TIL in the mid-1950s, Hiller aircraft constructed flying platforms for an army-navy program. The pilot simply leaned in the desired direction in the platform would follow.
DQgeJ TIL that while serving in WWII, Mel Brooks was assembling a bridge one night when he heard German soldiers singing badly in the distance, he grabbed a bullhorn and sang back. When he was finished he thought he heard applause.
XEpJD TIL the Leningrad siege in WW2 has been classified as an genocide by some historians. American estimates the death toll was higher than combined american and British losses in the war, "The Siege of Leningrad killed more civilians than bombing of Hamburg, Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined."
P1LMG TIL: a total solar eclipse occurs somewhere on Earth roughly every 18 months, but it only reoccurs in the same place every 350-400 years.