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TIL NFL running back Christian "The Nigerian Nightmare" Okoye originally found American football "boring" and didn't start playing the sport until he was 23. By age 28, he was the 1989 NFL season leader in rushing yards, and would later be inducted into the Kansas City Chiefs' Hall of Fame

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N596 TIL that 7 captive Russian air crew overpowered their Taliban guards, jump started the engine of their cargo plane using a battery to escape after a year in Afghanistan.
yYLv TIL People who survived suicide attempts by jumping off the Golden Gate bridge often regret their decision in midair, if not before. Said one survivor: “I instantly realized that everything in my life that I’d thought was unfixable was totally fixable—except for having just jumped.”
J1pk8 TIL that Electrician and Mechanic magazine had six title changes and multiple mergers, in a period of only two years. The magazine which boasted of having an exclusively male readership, eventually became Popular Science.
69GGJ TIL Between 1854 and 1929, an estimated 250,000 orphaned, abandoned, or homeless children were transported to rural communities by train across the country in hopes of providing a better life for them. These would become known as the "Orphan Trains".
W7j1Y TIL the duodenum acts as a degustator, food taster or sommelier, it receives a sample of the digested food in the form of chyme, for test, it analyses macro/micro nutrients, and gives signals for a specialised concoction of bile acids to be released. Once it give the green light, digestion proceeds.