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TIL Melinda French initially was put off when Bill Gates requested a date he set for a couple weeks in the future. She then realized he was so busy with meetings, he had to schedule a date accordingly. She then agreed. They were married 6 years later.

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YEAA TIL that when an Asian giant hornet, a gigantic wasp that preys on bees, enters the nest of Japanese honeybees, the bees will gather around it and form a ball that encloses it, causing it to overheat and die.
N7JgN TIL the creator of "The Wizard of Speed and Time" (1988) also did the visual effects for the movie "Ghost" (1990)
BOxW TIL of UCSC grad student Jim Kent who wrote a program to allow the Human Genome Project to assemble and publish the genome. The research was largely motivated by concerns that Celera Genomics, working on a parallel project, would patent the data. Kent’s results were released first by 3 days.
XYyj TIL: in 1987, a high school boy triangulated where fantasy author Piers Anthony lived using fictional maps from his novels, ran away from home to live with him & his family, and was welcomed into PA’s home for the day, spent the night there, and PA listened to him for ~4 hours and gave him advice.
5Ygnp TIL on July 7, 2017 a flight landing in San Francisco descended to an altitude of 25m and as close as 9m laterally to four planes waiting below before aborting. 1,000 passengers were at imminent risk and with only seconds to spare, narrowly avoided "the greatest aviation disaster in history"