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TIL Bill Nye The Science Guy Has a Plan to Launch Laser Bees into Space to Defend Earth Against Asteroids

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xYe7 TIL that in 1974, a young Tom Hanks wrote a letter to director George Roy Hill outlining how he should be “discovered” and that one day he will become “a hometown American boy who has hit the big-time, owns a Porsche, and calls Robert Redford ‘Bob’
rNVoy TIL in the 1960s, Cap'n Crunch cereal boxes came with whistles which coincidentally had the specific frequency (2600 hertz) required to exploit a vulnerability of in-band signaling enabling a phone to make free calls by entering an 'operator mode'.
VxJB TIL that in the UK ballpoint pens are called biros after their inventor, Laszlo Biro. He fled to Argentina in 1938 to avoid Nazi persecution and made pens for the Royal Air Force during WW2.
bKP9 TIL Tojo missed his heart when he tried to shoot himself as GIs came to arrest him, he was subsequently arrested, hospitalized, charged with war crimes, coerced into absolving the imperial family for any of said war crimes, and hung.
loLOA TIL Maine has 4,600+ coastal islands, not to mention some inland too. Maine’s total coastline, including islands, is over 5,000 miles long - long enough to stretch from Maine to Alaska