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TIL Edmund Hillary (first person to summit Mt Everest) was scheduled to serve as a guide for a flight over Antarctica on Air New Zealand Flight 901, but canceled to instead embark on a US speaking tour. Flight 901 ended up crashing into Mt Erebus, killing all onboard.

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nZvr TIL an Air Canada passenger flight took a detour and dropped from 37,000 feet to 4,000 feet to help find a stranded yacht off the Australian coast. It took the passengers 25 minutes after the emergency beacon was activated to locate the yacht.
4X5wX TIL the Adoration Of The Magi is an unfinished work by Leonardo da Vinci commissioned by a Florentine monastery in 1480. Consistent with his proneness to abandon projects, he eventually grew bored with it, simply left, and moved to Milan. The monastery paid Filippino Lippi to complete it instead.
PY4YZ TIL Canary Islands are actually named after dogs, not canaries. Their name comes from the latin "Canariae Insulae", which means "islands of dogs"
KON0E TIL Clitoridectomies (surgical removal of the clitoris) were performed in the United States into the 1960s to treat, among other things, "lesbianism."
AVdx TIL that the programmer for the Original Doom, John Carmack, broke into a school to steal an Apple II computer using home-made thermite; he later went to juvenile detention and forced to undergo a psychiatric evaluation.