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TIL Edgar Whisenant, former NASA engineer, wrote a multi-million-copies-sold book about the Rapture happening in 1988. When it didn't, he wrote another one about it happening in 1989, then 1993, and finally in 1994. His predictions were unsuccessful.

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V5e8 TIL after the release of Gayla Peevey’s “I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas” (1953) a campaign was launched to give her a hippopotamus for Christmas. The campaign succeeded & she was presented with an actual hippopotamus, which she donated to the city zoo. The hippopotamus lived for nearly 50 years
rRZbe TIL that in the early 1940s a Mexican scientist named Guillermo Gonzalez Camarena created a color television system some considered better than any American system at the time. His work made it possible in the 1970s for NASA to transmit color photos of Jupiter from the Voyager satellite.
y4jl TIL Anthony Perkins found out he had AIDS when he read about it in a tabloid. While he was in the hospital for a facial palsy, someone tested his blood for HIV and sold the results to the Enquirer.
E1Z0p TIL the avocado industry in Mexico is so big that the Mexican cartel for years took over farms through extortion. But the city of Tancítaro, the world capital of avocado production, took back their farms back by arming their citizens, building their own police, and bulletproofing their trucks.
BgJAk TIL Dostoievsky's greatest joy was writing the character of 'Karazinov', in 'The Devils' (1872), a scurrilous portrait of his rival, the poet Turgenev. When a fire broke out on board a ship, Turgenev apparently rushed from one crewman to the next, screaming, "Save me! I am my mother's only son!".