› added 4 years ago

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TIL in WWII, weather reports were censored to prevent enemy submarines from learning about conditions. A football game in Chicago was so covered in fog that the radio announcer couldn't see the field, but afterwards he was officially thanked for never using the word "fog" or mentioning the weather.

b6W1Z TIL of Snorri Thorfinnsson, an Icelander who was the first child of European descent to be born in the Americas, in the early 11th century. His parents were explorers Thorfinn Karlsefni and Gudrid Thorbjarnardóttir. He is one of the two main figures responsible for the Christianisation of Iceland.
b9roN TIL 17-yr-old Wolf Cukier found a new planet 3 days into a summer NASA internship. From space telescope data, he detected something blocking starlight, which was the shadow from a planet about 6.9 times larger than Earth. He doesn't get to name the planet, but he got a discount on a NASA jacket.
XE1dk TIL William Shatner sold his kidney stone for $25,000 to raise money for a housing charity
J1vN1 TIL the fictional languages in the Game of Thrones series are fully complete languages. Of all the actors that had to speak one or more of them, the person that portrayed the Grey Worm character was considered the best/most talented. He was skilled enough to speak like a natural native speaker.
16OgV TIL the Hass Avocado, which accounts for more than 80% of US avocado crop, was patented in 1935 after an accidental seedling grew fruit that Hass' children liked and brought to his attention.