› added 7 years ago

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TIL about Slugging, a practice where commuters driving into big cities will pick up fellow random commuters in order to take advantage of faster carpool lanes. No money is exchanged, and as many as 9,000 people in some US cities will Slug in a given day.

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9YWo6 TIL in 1638, Pope Urban VIII commissioned the song Miserere from Allegri based on Psalm 51 & forbade transcriptions from being made. In 1770, Mozart at age 14 copied it from memory under threat of excommunication. Word got back to the Pope, who summoned Mozart & awarded him a Papal Knighthood.
M1Dm TIL that the International Space Station travels at 17,100 mph. In other words, in the time it takes to play The Proclaimers’ “I’m Gonna Be”, the ISS travels exactly 1000 miles, the distance described in the song.
wLZyP TIL all audience members on Judge Judy are paid actors and in order to be able to attend a taping of the show, the actors need to be a member of the Screen Actor's Guild (although some exceptions are occasionally made)
R5v91 TIL that in 2017, after an explosion aboard a Slovenian cargo ship, pararescuemen from the New York Air National Guard parachuted into the ocean 1,500 miles off coast in the middle of the night to reach the vessel and saved the lives of two badly injured crew members
LkxBm TIL Operation Babylift happened in 1975 when 3300 orphaned Vietnamese babies and children where taken to the US and other Allies to be adopted. The first flight crashed, and 78 children died.