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TIL Franz Reichelt, a tailor by trade, convinced the Parisian police to jump from the Eiffel Tower in order to demonstrate a wearable parachute. After partially deploying the parachute he leaped to his death before a crowd of onlookers.

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e0RR6 TIL During WWII, an entire Italian island surrendered to a British RAF pilot named Sydney Cohen who emergency landed his plane there. There were 4,200 Italian troops, but only 1 pilot and 2 other officers on the plane. He became known as the King of Lampedusa.
mPBY TIL Disney-Pixar Chief Creative Officer John Lasseter was FIRED by Disney in the early-1980s after pitching a computer-animated film about forgotten appliances at a summer cabin waiting for their owner to return. He was so ashamed that he didn’t admit what happened to even his wife for over 20 years
R6g4 TIL of the Vela Incident, A nuclear explosion in the Indian ocean of unknown origin. The most widespread theory is that it was a joint South African-Israeli nuclear test.
KGZQ TIL that the cookiecutter shark feeds on animals much larger than itself by taking out small round cuts of meat from their bodies.
9YgND TIL zoologist Francis Buckland kept the remains of a cat under his bed at Winchester College, dug up and ate a dead panther from a zoo (declaring the meat "not very good"), and took his pet bear Tigleth Pileser to a meeting at Oxford University dressed in a cap and gown.