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TIL that in 1620 with the beer supply aboard ship running low, the captain of the Mayflower decided to land the settlers at Plymouth rock instead of sailing further south.

Read more history.howstuffworks.com

via reddit.com

W7yNd TIL the set for the 1989 movie "The Abyss" was constructed inside an abandoned nuclear power plant, modified to hold water. When filming wrapped, the set was just left there rather than deconstructed. It remained there until 2007 when it was finally demolished.
EOD0 TIL that Stand on Zanzibar, a book written in 1969 and set in the year 2010, predicted that world will have by 2010 a popular world leader named President Obomi, and that school shootings would be prevalent, among other near-accurate predictions.
woAdJ TIL that a carpenter got an MIT PhD. After his sailboat almost sank during a storm, Lyman Page decided to go to graduate school in physics. He went to MIT unannounced, got an unpaid night job in a lab, and worked as a carpenter. The job turned into a PhD, and Page is now a Princeton professor.
L49p TIL that Van Halen contracts contained a clause calling for “no brown m&m’s”, which allowed them to cancel a show if one was found, and only existed to guarantee that the contract was read and followed
9Y7oG TIL about Japan’s 5pm bell, or national emergency broadcast system, that plays music each day at a specific time for over 90% of the country. The music is actually a daily test to ensure the system can inform residents of any major disasters (i.e. tsunami, industrial accident).