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TIL President Boris Yeltsin once visited Ireland but he got so drunk on the airplane that it had to circle for an hour over the airport and when it finally landed Yeltsin would not come out of the plane to meet the Irish delegation

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oB8G8 TIL of the "Law of Triviality" - AKA the "The Bike Shedding" effect. C. Northcote Parkinson's argument claims individuals or organizations spend a disproportionate amount of time on trivial, easy to grasp issues rather than far more important, difficult tasks.
1Bg7 TIL that the Russian cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev traveled a 48th of a second into the future. He spent a total of 803 days in space traveling at 18,000 mph, causing appreciable time dilation.
8KOX TIL that human poop and farts get their foul smell from the chemical compounds Skatole and Indole (among others). At low concentrations, these compounds smell flowery, and are used in perfumes. USA and Israel have used Skatole in crowd control sprays—the stench does not wash off skin for 3 days.
WkAW8 TIL that there is a shanytown on the edge of Seoul's affluent Gangnam District, created by people evicted from houses in low-income areas demolished prior to the 1988 Olympics, who came there as their last refuge. It has 2500-4000 residents, mostly impoverished elderly, living in shacks and trailers
v1Ljx TIL Helen Keller took over the controls of a Douglas Skymaster airplane for 20 minutes while flying over the Mediterranean during a trip from Rome to Paris. The instructions were relayed from the pilot to Polly Thompson, and then to Helen through fingerspelling.