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TIL: Roller coasters were invented to distract American people from immorality of taverns, gambling and dancing halls, and brothels

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8avPX TIL that the tar in the La Brea Tar Pits is actually asphalt and it's so sticky that a pool as shallow as 3 inches could trap an animal that weighs 10,000 pounds!
kOgOm TIL of Otto Skorenzy, the 6' 4" 250lb German solider listed by MI5 as The Most Dangerous Man in Europe. Part of the Nazi Werewolf operations and responsible for a raid on a mountaintop castle, he allegedly went on to work for Mossad.
OGM9a TIL that Ben S. Cauley, Jr. was the sole survivor of the plane crash that killed singer Otis Redding & 6 other people in 1967. Cauley took off his seat belt shortly before the crash. He managed to cling to a seat cushion for 20 minutes, until a rescue boat pulled him from the freezing lake waters.
8eByP TIL that the world smallest piloted biplane to fly is the Starr Bumble Bee II with a wingspan of 5 ft 6 in, total length of 8 ft 10 inches and takeoff weight of 260 kg. The record was set by Robert Starr in 1988 when he climbed to 400ft before the engine failed causing a crash.
R5rej TIL it was Avi Arad's idea to make Stan Lee cameos a tradition, but Sam Raimi originally didn't want Lee to cameo in Spider-Man, saying, "imagine you’re a minor director in England doing Macbeth and you’re told, 'Put the writer in the play.' It sounds absurd."