› added 5 years ago

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TIL on Airforce One, commemorative packs of red, white, and blue-colored M&M's are given to guests in lieu of cigarette boxes. This was due to Nancy Reagan's request to ban smoking on Airforce One in 1988.

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OGjdg TIL that the days of the week are named after Germanic gods, which in turn are Germanic interpretations of the Roman gods.
LQDrm TIL about the fall of Alan Magee. A B-17 ball turret gunner in World War II, Magee fell more than 20,000 feet without a parachute when his plane was destroyed by flak. He smashed through the roof of a French railroad station, survived, and spent the rest of the war in a prison camp.
OWJR TIL that the East India Trading Company once had a private army of 260,000. Double that of the British Army. It also once accounted for half of the world’s trade.
oBbgE TIL of Al Schmid, a US marine who continued to man his machine gun on Guadalcanal even after being permanently blinded by a Japanese grenade, and later received the Navy Cross for his actions
mx0Op TIL that J.R.R. Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings from 1937 to 1949, and that it wasn't published until 1955; in other words, it took 18 years for it to be completed and published.