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TIL The hit song 'St Elmo's Fire' was written in just two hours. Although the song was part of the movie soundtrack, the lyrics were actually inspired by the Canadian athlete Rick Hansen, who was traveling around the world, via his wheelchair, to raise awareness for spinal cord injuries.

ADdrl TIL of CSX 8888, known as "crazy eights": A runaway train that ran uncontrolled through Ohio for two hours at up to 82 km/h. Police tried to stop it by shooting at a fuel cut-off switch and it was eventually stopped by a second locomotive chasing behind it so an engineer could jump aboard.
a8x6N TIL in 1954 a Hurricane hit Canada at a category 1 despite traveling all the way inland from the Carolinas. It killed 81 people in the Toronto area, 95 in the US, and 469 in Haiti.
9mrQ TIL that when Mansa Musa (richest person in history) went through Cairo, Medina and Mecca in order to perform pilgrimage, he distributed so much gold and gifts that it caused super inflation. Prices of goods skyrocketed so much that even after 12 years the markets still didnt fully recover.
l7Qar TIL The Bismarck Archipelago is the name of the islands to the east of Papau New Guinea including New Britain and New Ireland. It was seized from Germany by Aussies during WWI, then given to Papau New Guinea in 1975.
J4g4 TIL A professinal linguist in Native American languages was asked to invent Klingon for Star Trek. He speaks Klingon, but notes that others have attained greater fluency