› added 9 years ago

101

TIL Sunita Williams, Navy pilot and NASA astronaut, was the first person to run a marathon from space, running the Boston Marathon on the International Space Station’s treadmill. Her fellow astronauts fed her oranges during the race.

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6EQ07 TIL that like homo sapiens, tasmanian devils are the last surviving species of their genus.
v1oLx TIL about Jim’s Corner. Travelers using the single gravel road in and out of the Northwest Angle are expected to use a telephone at Jim's Corner to contact Canadian or U.S. Customs and make their declarations as the border crossing is unstaffed.
5X9k TIL that Venezuela was the first country in the world to abolish the death penalty for all crimes, doing so by Constitution in 1863.
XL1R TIL in 1945 a group of Soviet school children presented a US Ambassador with a carved US Seal as a gesture of friendship. It hung in his office for 7 years before discovering it contained a listening device.
vWm8 TIL the rotary phone was invented by an undertaker. The operator in his hometown was married to his competition, so the rotary dial was a way to bypass the human operator.