› added 10 years ago

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TIL Dick Bong is the USs highest air ace, shooting down at least 40 planes during WW II. He actually collided with one plane, claiming a “probable” victory. In 1945, he became a Lockheed test pilot and died in a crash of a P-80 jet fighters on the same day that the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.

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xl4g TIL the 1904 Olympic marathon ‘winner’ cheated by using a car, the second place finisher drank brandy mixed with rat poison, another athlete was chased off course by dogs, and another ate a rotten apple during the run.
OxZ6 TIL that Steve Jobs last words were “Oh wow.” repeated 3 times.
Z8E4R TIL British General Charles O'Hara had the unfortunate "distinction" of surrendering not only to George Washington at Yorktown, but Napoleon Bonaparte at Toulon as well.
BoaL TIL Nasir ad-Din Tusi, a Persian polymath, developed a theory of evolution by natural selection 600 years before Darwin. He wrote that hereditary variability is the leading force of evolution, and that organisms which can change faster are ‘more variable’, thus giving them an advantage over others
9wwA7 TIL that the phrase ‘involuntary celibate’ was coined by Alana, a ‘nerdy queer woman’ who had never been on a date, and who wanted a name for her loneliness and the loneliness of others like her.