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TIL: A site manager's failed attempt to free a stuck flatbed truck resulted in it rolling off a cliff, blocking a railway tunnel just as an express train was approaching, leading to a crash that killed 49 people.

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ZpA8Y TIL during the 12th century, Egypt engaged in a trade of mummies with Europe due to the belief that these bodies emitted a valuable fluid with medicinal properties. However, it later came to light that the term "mummy" was a mistranslation of "mumia," which is another word for liquid asphalt cement.
4XL95 TIL Charlie Chaplin made his first sound film in 1940, which was 13 years after the emergence of talkies. His silent films in this time were still very popular.
9kKQ TIL during the Cold War, Nikita Khrushchev said to Mao Zedong that “Berlin is the testicles of the West. Every time I want to make the West scream, I squeeze on Berlin.”
gMVBD TIL During the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz mission, to help USA/USSR relations, astronauts and cosmonauts played smuggled audio recordings of glasses clinking, laughter, and many female voices. Houston radioed to ask what’s going on. "Oh nothing,” they said. “We finished work, just having a party up here."
JLk1 TIL that the flashes of color you see in your eye after you rub them are called phosphenes.