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TIL that in 2007, the hijacking of a Mauritanian flight was thwarted. Over the PA, the pilot instructed the passengers that he was about to make a bumpy landing, and they should attack the hijacker while he was off balance. He said this in French, which the gunman did not speak. The ploy succeeded.

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Elmd TIL that, according to the memoir of a former slave, First Lady Dolley Madison did not save the Lansdowne portrait of George Washington from the British burning it during the War of 1812. Rather, a Frenchman and a gardener saved it, while Dolley just ran off with silver.
KYDN9 TIL Science Fiction author and editor Harlen Ellison on occasion used the pseudonym Cordwainer Bird to alert members of the public to situations in which he felt his creative contribution to a project had been mangled by others
8e8K TIL: During the 2011 Virginia Earthquake people in New England read about the quake on Facebook and Twitter 15-30 seconds before they felt it.
66JY TIL in 1969, Porsche developed a successor to the VW Beetle, the EA 266, which had a 1.6l 100hp mid-engine (strongest Beetle at the time: 54hp) and went up to 118mph. The VW board of directors was horrified - they wanted it to be sporty, but cheap and not a sports car - and it was never produced.
699Om TIL Astronomer George Ellery Hale observed the sun in 1908 through a 60-foot solar telescope and documented the Zeeman effect in a sunspot. Hale’s photograph represented the first magnetic fields discovered outside of Earth