› added 5 months ago

18

TIL in 1986, 18-month-old "Baby Jessica" fell down a narrow well and was trapped upside-down for 58 hours

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wowa7 TIL most chewing gum is made out of plastic
xVkK5 TIL There was a Canadian ad campaign for "Diamond Shreddies", which were just the original square Shreddies, rotated 45°.
Mdgb TIL Henry Ford published an anti-smoking book, circulated to youth in 1914, called The Case Against the Little White Slaver, which documented many dangers of cigarette smoking attested to by many researchers and luminaries.
eJr5 TIL that in 1915, a man named Charles Hatfield convinced the town of San Diego that he could create rainfall using a secret mix of chemicals. The city offered to pay him $10,000 if he could end their drought, and the result!, a few days later, was the town’s worst flood of the 20th century.
mxZBE TIL there is an island called Disappointment Island. It's uninhabited, but home to over 65,000 pairs of white-capped albatross. In 1868, a steel tanker crashed there and 68 people died, while the remaining 15 waited 18 months to be rescued. In 1907, another ship crashed there and 12 men drowned.