› added 7 years ago

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TIL that Mayday procedure was originated Frederick Stanley Mockford which was given the task to think of a word that would indicate distress and would easily be understood by all pilots and ground staff in an emergency.

rNKBy TIL the "Toyota War" was an international military conflict during which the Chadian army warded off Gaddafi's tank-equipped Libyan invasion with one of the first large scale uses of civilian technicals (Toyota Land Cruisers with heavy weaponry mounted to them).
gM0LD TIL: An orphaned fawn that has been unable to nurse will be dehydrated, causing the tips of the fawn's ears to curl backward slightly. Healthy, well-fed fawns have straight ears.
NXQg6 TIL American Civil War-era politician Clement Vallandigham died trying to defend a man accused of murder in a bar, who claimed he had accidentally discharged a pistol. Vallandigham attempted to demonstrate what happened... and accidentally shot himself with the pistol.
Lkv6V TIL Ron Howard only accepted a role in the pilot of the show of Happy Days to avoid the Vietnam War draft. According to Howard, he had a horrible draft number (41 or 42), and, because the government wasn't accepting college deferment anymore he needed a work deferment.
b6B8Q TIL: In the 1950s, the Army to built a bunker close to Washington DC so that Congress could go there if there was a nuclear attack. Engineers built a facility 700 ft below a golf course - 2 stories and over 100,000 sq ft - kept secret until 1992, when the Washington Post revealed its existence.