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TIL of Arthur du Mosch, who had a wild leopard leap in the bed of his sleeping family trying to eat his pet cat. Clad in only underwear, he wrestled the leopard and pinned him down until help arrived. "I held him like that for about 20 minutes and talked to him in Dutch. I have a way with animals".

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0wZ5A TIL A programmer at Apple kept working for three months after his project was canceled, simply because he thought the work was interesting and wanted to finish. Apple employees helped his cause by sneaking him into the building, and the project (a graphing calculator) was successfully released.
aw4ZJ TIL 9 year old Rachel Beckwith started a $300 fundraiser for clean water. She asked friends and family to donate $9 instead of B-day presents. She only raised $220, and sadly died in a car accident soon after. Her story spread, her $220 grew to $1.2 million, providing clean water to 37,770 people.
VBwGZ TIL that traditional lacquer is made w urushiol sap, aka the rash-causing toxin in poison ivy & poison oak. In fact, "urushi" (as in "urushi-ol") is the Japanese for the Chinese lacquer tree (also toxic) & an English word for lacquerware. They all fall in the genus Toxicodendron, or "poison tree".
Oo8DR TIL public urinals or "Pissoirs" were used by the French Resistance during World War II as places to meet for a private conversation or to leave a message for someone without the Nazi’s finding out.
vWOB TIL that this day, in 1935, it became illegal for airplanes to fly over the White House. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s complaint that aircraft disturb his sleep prompts the new law.