› added 1 year ago

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TIL about the "Gimli Glider", a Boeing 767 jet that ran out of fuel and glided for 17 minutes without engine power, crash-landing on a crowded racetrack with no deaths or major injuries. Other pilots who used a flight simulator to reenact the incident all failed to land safely.

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e01x4 TIL Mary Ball Washington, George Washington's mother, was orphaned at 12 and named her son after her guardian, George Eskridge. Her husband, Augustine Washington, died when their son George was 11, and she never remarried. She died of breast cancer in 1789, after George became the president.
1L18 TIL that notorious serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer was not executed via capital punishment, but rather beaten to death in prison by a fellow inmate.
kOG9W TIL one of the reasons American bullfrogs are so dangerous as invasive species is cannibalism. Adult bullfrogs can subsist entirely off tadpoles and younger frogs (which eat algae and insects), and that reliable food source lets adult populations grow beyond what's normally possible in an ecosystem
0jwR TIL that eugenics, a movement that led to the murder of millions in WWII, was practiced in the United States many years before eugenics programs in Nazi Germany, which were largely inspired by the previous American work.
WmEN TIL a US born nun was killed in Brazil for speaking out about the effect agriculture was having on deforestation of rainforests.