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TIL that the original Gettysburg address was a disaster: no one expected Lincoln to show up, he wasn’t the key speaker, and the reaction from the audience was so muted that he considered the speech a failure

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g17X TIL that Josh Morgan (wide reciever for the Washington Redskins) survived the Virginia Tech shooting while a student there, and his mother survived both the 2001 pentagon terrorist attacks and yesterday’s DC navy yard shootings while working at or near both locations.
RdZ6 TIL that in the Netherlands there are dozens of public facilities where you can bring recreational drugs including weed, cocaine and ecstasy to test if they are safe
rN0k1 TIL huge rogue waves were dismissed as a scientifically implausible sailors' myth by scientists until one 84ft wave hit an oil platform. The phenomenon has since been proven mathematically and simulated in a lab, also proving the existence of rogue holes in the ocean.
9BKQ TIL Tami Erin, the actress who played Pippi Longstocking in 1988, sold a sex tape after her ex-boyfriend threatened to profit from it.
E11gd TIL an American woman never learned what happened to her husband, whose plane was shot down over Les Ventes, France during WWII. She finally got her congressman to reopen his case in 2011. She was shocked to learn the town had been memorializing him and his sacrifice for 67 years.