› added 6 months ago

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TIL Kary Mullis, a Nobel Prize laureate, wrote about an encounter with a fluorescent, talking raccoon. He suggested it might have been an extraterrestrial alien.

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mG0O TIL In 1903, a large pocket of underground gas was found in Dexter, KS. In the hopes of economic prosperity, a celebration was planned. The burning of the gas was to “light the entire countryside for a day and a night,” but it just wouldn’t ignite… and Helium was discovered.
16GJd TIL in 1967 three astronauts - Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger B. Chaffee - died in a cabin fire in the first test of the Apollo command and service module. Because there was no rocket fuel, the test was not considered hazardous, and emergency preparedness for it was poor.
QmWL TIL Some Chinese companies hire white actors to pretend to be foreign businessmen so that the companies can seem more connected globally.
v1Y84 TIL Mythbusters hosts Adam and Jamie built a combat robot for the show Robot Wars. It was so effective that it often sent pieces of its opponent's bodywork over the shield walls of the arena into the crowd, and after two fights the show's insurance company deemed the bot "too hazardous" to compete.
Ypx0W TIL that in 2007, after their Kiowa helicopter was shot down in Iraq, two pilots were rescued when they strapped their bodies to the exterior of an Apache AH-64 helicopter and were flown out of the combat zone.