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TIL: A southern France firefighters' department statistic attributes 16% of local bushfires to cigarette litter thrown out of moving vehicles

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YpAxx TIL Disney composer Alan Menken came from a family of dentists and trained at medical school. He was a poor student, "wild hippie" and barely finished NYU. 8 Oscars, 10 Grammys, 7 Golden Globes later, Menken is now a star at NYU with a doctorate and scholarship in his name
kJYv5 TIL B-17 crews in WWII were volunteers, they could quit flying at any time. They had some of the highest casualty rates of any service in the war yet thousands continued to fly.
oRJQY TIL The seven-day weekly cycle (Sunday→Monday→Tuesday→Wednesday→Thursday→Friday→Saturday) has remained unbroken since ancient Rome.
4Pda TIL the “navel” in a navel orange is actually a second, conjoined twin orange within the same peel
BreRb TIL: In Soviet labor camps, prisoners would ingest a condom attached to a length of rubber tubing, fill it up with raw alcohol then smuggle themselves back into the camp. Once there, they would be suspended upside down by the other prisoners and used as a human keg.