› added 5 years ago

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TIL Palma de Mallorca Airport in Spain only reached 1 million passengers for the first time in 1962. Today, the airport serves 29 million passengers per year & during the busiest days in the Summer handles as many movements as London-Heathrow, the busiest airport in Europe.

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XbwR TIL that talking drums were used in Africa for centuries to transmit messages over long distances by mimicking speech. When these were brought to America during the slave trade, they were banned because slaves used them to transmit messages their masters couldn’t decipher.
jN6ma TIL that it is not possible to resign from the UK Parliament. To "resign", a Member requests that the Queen appoint him/her as "Royal Steward" of a manor (with no duties or pay). Working for Queen while serving in Parliament is illegal, and so by doing this, the Member is ejected from Parliament.
j6djN TIL Scruff McGruffs actor got sentenced to 16yrs in Prison for having 1k pot plants, and 27 guns (including a grenade launcher).
Own4 TIL that bank robber John Wojtowicz plotted some of his robbery based on scenes in The Godfather (1972) starring Al Pacino. Al Pacino later went on to play John in the Academy Award winning movie Dog Day Afternoon (1975) based on the robbery.
rM6d TIL in 2015 a bus driver in India took a nap on his bus, only to be awoken to a monkey that had climbed into the driver’s cabin & had started the engine. As the driver ran to the cabin, the monkey panicked, shifted gears & jumped out. The bus rammed 2 other buses before the driver regained control.