› added 10 years ago

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TIL, for over 20 years, Cuba has been aiding and treating more than 18,000 children affected by the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, for free.

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eOP4 TIL that “A Charlie Brown Christmas” (1965) was rejected at first by CBS: they didn’t like that amateur children were doing the voices, they didn’t like the “anti-consumerism” theme of the plot – and they didn’t like the music.
d80x9 TIL 26 kids were found after being featured in the video for the song "Runaway Train" by Soul Asylum in 1993. The version shown in Australia showed a number of young backpacking tourists. Several of them turned out to be victims of Ivan Milat, the Backpacker Murderer.
01Pp TIL That the Soviet Union, and now Russia, have a fail-deadly system which automatically launches a full scale nuclear attack in the event that authoritative command is incapacitated. It uses light, seismic, radioactive, and overpressure systems to activate the launch. It is still in use today.
Nrd8 TIL Luis von Ahn took CAPTCHA (the squiggly silly words you type when you sign up for something online) and turned it into a worldwide mass text deciphering tool, using people like you and I to digitize all the books that exist in the world, one word at a time.
RAp6 TIL - Michael Jackson was the one to suggest to Queen that “Another one Bites The Dust” (written by Queen bassist John Deacon) should be released as a single. Even though Queen didn’t think it would do that well.