› added 11 years ago

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TIL in 1940, 2 Australian air force planes collided and locked together midair during a training exercise yet pilot L. Fuller landed the entangled planes after traveling 5 miles, after all other crews ejected. Fuller was commemorated & promoted, but died in 1944 when his bicycle collided with a bus.

dDNK8 TIL: Llívia, a Spanish town with 1,511 residents, is entirely surrounded by France. This unique status stems from the 1659 Treaty of the Pyrenees, which ceded 33 villages in the Cerdanya region to France. However, Llívia was classified as a ‘town’ rather than a ‘village’ leaving it as part of Spain.
wVb7 TIL there is a city in New Mexico named Truth or Consequences. The city changed its name from Hot Springs in 1950 in order to become the airing location for a radio broadcast of the same name.
wgvE TIL that in 1924, when Standard Oil was researching tetraethyl lead as a gasoline additive, 32 of 49 workers had to be hospitalized due to lead poisoning, and 5 of them died. A federal panel made entirely of industry scientists later concluded that there “no danger” from tetraethyl lead.
xVRXb TIL about Killing of Vincent Chin. He was killed by two Chrysler workers who thought he was japanese, and therefore responsible for their layoffs. He was Chinese American.
d87p9 TIL that in 1972, Oscar-winning director Sydney Pollack shot a feature-length documentary on Aretha Franklin but forgot to use clapperboards, which made it impossible to sync audio and video and left all of the footage unusable. The film was finally salvaged and released 46 years later.