› added 12 years ago

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TIL In 1962 200 million US and Russian citizens narrowly missed getting nuked. As a result, There is a red phone linking the White House and Kremlin.

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j4Rv TIL that when filming the movie Titanic they only built the port side of the ship. Scenes showing the starboard side were flipped in post production. As a result of this everything on the starboard side of the ship, from lettering to the buttons on costumes, had to be backwards during filming.
grEBL TIL that Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman to travel to space on June 16, 1963, when she orbited Earth as part of the Vostok 6 mission. She remains the youngest woman to fly to space, the only female astronaut/ cosmonaut to make a solo space journey.
m116P TIL Claude E. Shannon was the first winner of the Claude E. Shannon Award.
jNr4n TIL about 'The Cutter Documents' which revealed that in 1980s pharmaceutical companies knowingly sold HIV contaminated blood products to hemophilia patients. It ended up killing many people.
0wgQp TIL that when the Panchen Lama (2nd in command to the Dalai Lama) died in 1989, the Tibetan Buddhists chose a six year old boy to replace him in accordance with tradition. The Chinese government was unhappy with the pick and abducted him. He hasn’t been heard from since.