› added 8 years ago

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TIL when Nicolas Cage was sleeping at his home, he was awoken by a presence. Cage awoke to find a naked man before his eyes, eating a fudgesicle and wearing his jacket. “It sounds funny” Cage said, “but it was horrifying”. Cage used “Verbal Judo” to get the man to leave. Cage now lives on an island.

mxGYo TIL in 1976, Barry Kidston, a 23-year-old chemistry graduate student in Maryland, US, synthesized MPPP with MPTP as a major impurity, and self-injected the result. Within three days he began exhibiting symptoms of Parkinson's disease
JY1Ql TIL The Russians made an experimental tank called the 'Tsar Tank' that had two giant wheels, and was shaped like a tricycle.
wL4rY TIL while the Icelandic airline Loftleiðir was only allowed to operate flights to and from Iceland, they managed to circumvent the rule by having their USA-continental Europe flights covered by two tickets: one for flying to Iceland, and the other for flying from Iceland to the mainland.
78JmZ TIL that the Bennerley Viaduct was built as a solution to railway rivalry and difficult terrain, and it still stands because its innovation wrought iron lattice construction was too difficult and expensive to demolish and now it's a Grade II* listed building (i.e. protected)
R7Gm1 TIL that the Navy has a program for intentionally sinking old vessels to become artificial reefs for marine life. The first and largest of these vessels was the USS Oriskany, an aircraft carrier built at the end of WWII, which was sent to the ocean floor off the coast of Florida in 2006.