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TIL that in 2006 race driver Alex Roy drove NYC to LA in 31 hours and 4 minute. He planned the route to avoid traffic lights and and had friends in spotter planes watching for radar and speed traps.

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mxyJx TIL that the traditional wedding march 'Here Comes the Bride' comes from an opera where a princess agrees to marry a knight whose name she does not know. After she breaks her promise to never ask him who he is, he abandons her and she falls down dead out of grief.
alAL TIL that so many British men died in World War I that young women were warned that only 10% would marry. Newspapers discussed the country’s “Surplus Two Million” women.
Y7aQx TIL - That during Apartheid in South Africa you were forbidden to have relations with someone of another race. The Boers developed the "Pencil Test"; if a pencil would stay in your hair when pushed in you were declared as "black" and could only have relations with other "blacks".
MeVRa TIL in 2010, a Kansas State University professor went on a Twinkie diet, where he ate mainly Twinkies, Oreos, and Doritos to prove to his students that calorie counting is the important part of losing weight, not nutritional content. He lost 27 pounds in 2 months.
QNnPa TIL "In 1956, the students of the Pasadena Playhouse School of Theatre arts voted two actors as the least likely to succeed: two friends, Gene Hackman (who had the lowest grades at that point in the history of the school) and Dustin Hoffmann. Both went on to win two Oscars each