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TIL of Gavel, a K-9 Cadet who was fired from the Police Academy for being too friendly after months of training; he then got a new job as Vice-Regal Dog for the Office of the Governor in Queensland where he greets visitors, attends official functions, sits in on Governor's briefings

Read more telegraph.co.uk

via reddit.com

GYGZ4 TIL that the X-100, the car JFK was killed while riding in, was not retired after his assassination. The X-100 was cleaned up and rebuilt with additional safety features, and wasn't taken out of service until 1977. Johnson, Ford, Nixon, and Carter all rode in the car too.
lBrG TIL prisoners in China are reportedly being forced to gold mine in games like WOW to build up credits that prison guards can trade for real money
bDXZ TIL English words for livestock (cow, sheep, chicken) are Germanic-based and the words for meats (beef, mutton, poultry) are French-based. This is because the people who raised the animals were Anglo-Saxon peasants and the people who ate them were Norman aristocrats.
DNMY TIL: The SR-71 Blackbird was sometimes used to fly over our enemy’s territory during ceremonies involving their heads of state to constantly “sonic-boom” them. This was to remind them they were doing things counter to U.S. Policies.
ADQM7 TIL of Rick Rescorla, director of security for Morgan Stanley and tenant of the World Trade Center south tower, helped to evacuate all but 13, including himself, of the company's 2,687 employees before the tower's collapse.