› added 1 month ago

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TIL that U.S. Vice President William R. King took the oath of office in Cuba in 1853 because he was too ill to travel to Washington, making him the only U.S. president or vice president ever sworn in on foreign soil, and he died less than a month later before ever serving in Washington.

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OaDY TIL that in 1917 a man named H.L. Mencken, in an effort to prove the gullibility of Americans, published a completely fabricated history of the invention of the bathtub, using random facts, dates, and names. Even today, some of the facts from his story are cited in publications.
Eg6V0 TIL A pilot has resigned from South African Airways (SAA) after flying for more than 20 years with a fake licence.
geAb TIL that Target Canada was so poorly planned that Canadian consumers would continue to cross the border and shop at Target stores in the United States.
ndpB TIL: When an F18 is catapulted from its carrier, the pilot doesn’t actually take the controls. The acceleration is so brisk that the pilot would pitch down thinking that the nose was to high and crash into the ocean. They instead just hold handle they call the “towel rail”
l7Boa TIL that the song “I Just Had Sex” by The Lonely Island is played “unironically” in public in countries such as Vietnam and Thailand; bandmate Akiva Schaffer noting “The nuance…would be lost if English wasn’t your first language”