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342

TIL the Mississippi River ran backwards in 1812

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xVdB1 TIL that the spacesuits for the first moon landing were made by Playtex, a company famous for making bras and girdles. NASA had staged a competition to see who could make the best suit. Playtex officials essentially had to beg to be allowed to submit a suit design into the competition.
dn78 TIL a US cargo plane crashed while moving children from Vietnam. American businessman Robert Macauley heard that it would take over a week to evacuate the survivors, so he chartered a Boeing 747 and arranged for 300 orphaned children to leave the country, paying for the trip by mortgaging his house.
6EEWX TIL that Salt Lake City planners made the city blocks way too big making intersection crossings dangerous for pedestrians so now they give them big ass flags to carry while they cross!
4XZRJ TIL: Two stones set in to a quiet Edinburgh street mark the site of Scotland's last hanging (in 1815) of convicted highwaymen. Sympathy for the executed men and folklore over the decades spawned a legend that the cement around the stones never fully dries.
xplB TIL the city of Sao Paolo implemented a “Clean City Law” in 2006, which banned all outdoor advertisements. No billboards, no ads on buses, no posters. This ‘uncovered’ problems such as illegal workers living in bad conditions but also lead to more street art and more visible city architecture.