› added 4 years ago

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TIL about the liking gap, which is that people you meet like you more than you think. Psychologists found that "people systematically underestimated how much their conversation partners liked them and enjoyed their company."

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LkOB9 TIL: Because in 1971 15 percent of American soldiers in Vietnam were heroin addicts, the government started operation Golden Flow which required soldiers to pass a drug test in order to return home.
j6r9N TIL that in 1210, King John of England imprisoned a noble named Maud de Braose with her son William in a dungeon beneath Corfe Castle, and left there to starve to death. When their bodies were retrieved 11 days later, it was found that Maud had eaten parts of her son’s body before she died.
8ekdG TIL that when Henry Maxim invented the automatic machine-gun, he went deaf from test-firing it so much.. this affected his son enough that as an adult he added his own invention to the family legacy: the silencer.
AE8o TIL in 1957 a US Air Force pilot caught in bad weather discovered his prototype jet fighter had no cockpit lighting. He managed to navigate and land the aircraft by periodically flicking a Zippo cigarette lighter and using the flame to read the instruments.
dBvB TIL in 1994, flying home from the U.S., Russian President Boris Yeltsin was scheduled to stop over in Ireland and meet the Taoiseach (prime minister). Yeltsin overslept, so his men claimed he was too unwell to leave the plane and they flew on to Moscow, leaving the Taoiseach standing on the tarmac.