› added 11 years ago

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TIL after a wave of plane hijackers demanded passage to Cuba in the 1960s, the FAA considered building a fake Havana airport in Florida. US agents would wait for the plane to land and arrest the unsuspecting hijackers.

6QNY TIL a man blew his head off in the middle of the Harvard campus, as an “as an experiment in nihilism”, as described in his 1900-pg manifesto.
V7BD TIL rapper Rakim, universally considered one of the greatest rap lyricists ever, quit Dr. Dre’s record label because Dr. Dre wanted him to rap about things like “killing somebody”, while Rakim wanted to rap more about “bringing somebody to life”.
6EolX TIL That when Washington D.C. was first built and the federal government moved there, there was no building for the Supreme Court. They had no permanent meeting place until 1810, when they moved into the north wing (Senate) of the Capitol and stayed there until 1935 when they had their own building.
kJpYg TIL that when Margaret Keane sued her ex-husband Walter Keane for claiming credit for her artwork, the judge asked them both to paint in the courtroom. Walter refused, citing a sore shoulder, while Margaret finished her painting in just 53 minutes, proving she was the true artist.
x6M07 TIL that the date of Easter used to be so complicated to calculate that church authorities would come up with algorithms to determine it years in advance. Disagreements over the proper algorithm led to Eastern Orthodox churches celebrating Easter on a different date than Western churches.