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1094

TIL The first woman to have flown into space(1963), Valentina Tereshkova, also volunteered in 2013 to go on a one-way trip to Mars.

Read more theguardian.com

via ift.tt

p8PwO TIL that in 1933 6000 people were deported by the Soviet Union to an island in the middle of Siberia and were abandoned there without food or shelter. Within three weeks most of the prisoners were dead due to the widespread episodes of cannibalism. The island became known as “Cannibal Island”.
gM54A TIL of Gus the Central Park Zoo Polar Bear (1985-2013). Reporters dubbed him "neurotic", "depressed", "flaky", and "bipolar" turning him into a "symbol of the stress of living in New York City". As part of his therapy and treatment, Gus was the first zoo animal in history to be treated with Prozac.
JYXWj TIL Alexandra Elbakyan, a science graduate born in Kazakhstan due to the frustrations of publisher paywalls she found once returning back home from a research internship at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlantis, founded the largest pirate site for academic papers Sci-Hub
N7WQ TIL that when Rock Band was in its developing stages, Harmonix codenamed it Rock Band: Nickelback “on the theory that the name of the quintessentially generic modern rock group would be enough to deflect all curiosity.”
KYD46 TIL Jose Canseco is the most successful author athlete of all-time having published 2 books—Juiced and Vindicated. Juiced spent 8 weeks on the New York Times bestseller lists and details the Steroid Era of baseball.