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TIL a lot of ancient Roman furniture we know about was preserved in cities buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE. High temperatures carbonized the furniture rather than burning it, which left well preserved wooden objects

wL0W8 TIL In 1970 Oregon attempted to discard a whale carcass on its coast by blowing it up.
WkKN9 TIL Martin Scorsese, after requiring 19 takes to get a scene right in his film Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, praised one particular 6-year-old extra. “She ate 19 ice cream cones and didn’t get sick, that girl’s gonna be an actress!” That girl was future Academy Award-winning actress Laura Dern.
DZOg TIL Maj. Iván Castro is the only active duty blind officer serving in the US Army Special Forces. Castro lost his eyesight in 2006 in Iraq when a mortar round severely wounded him. After being told he’d never see again, he learned to train and serve without sight. He was promoted Captain in 2008.
8eY8X TIL Jack Toper, an RAF wireless operator in WW2, was a member of the 'guinea pig club' for RAF members who suffered burns. Medical records show skin from his stomach is attached to his arm and grafted onto his face to make a new nose.
Y7PQA TIL about Low-background steel, any steel produced prior to the detonation of the first nuclear bombs in the 1940s and 1950s and now typically found in shipwrecks. It is often used for modern particle detectors because more modern steel is contaminated with traces of nuclear fallout.