› added 7 months ago

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TIL 12-year-old Bahia Bakari was the sole survivor of a plane crash in the Indian Ocean that killed her mom & 151 others. She had little swimming experience & no life vest. So she clung to a piece of the wreckage & floated in heavy seas for over 9 hours, much of it in darkness, before being rescued.

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6DJX TIL Fedex got down to the last $5k, which wasn’t enough to refuel the planes to make that weekend’s deliveries. With impending bankruptcy and no other options Frederick Smith literally took it to Vegas, got lucky, and turned it into enough money to refuel, finish the shipments, and save the company.
GAXb4 TIL that an assassination attempt made on James Bond in Casino Royale (1953), was based on a real such failed bomb attack on Franz Von Papen the Vice Chancellor of Germany. Papen survived because the trees he was around, took the blast impact.
j8VX TIL it would take a computer program 550 years to crack a password like ‘bighaystrawstack’, and only 3 days for one like 'Tr0ub4dor&3’.
8eKV8 TIL that there are ships propelled/assisted by large cylindrical rotors on the main deck that harness the Magnus effect to propel themselves forward.
WkANX TIL that that the British Government was able to safeguard supplies of fish and chips during both World Wars, making it one of the few non-rationed foods