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TIL while recovering from a plane crash, Howard Hughes decided he didn't like his bed so he called in a group of engineers to design a new one which served as a prototype for modern hospital beds

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b99x4 We might be too deep in our slumber to do so.
ajOo TIL airline pilots in the 1930s and 40s would navigate by listening to a stream of automated “A” and “N” Morse codes when visibility was poor. They would turn the aircraft to the right when hearing an “N” stream, to the left on an “A” stream and fly straight ahead while hearing a steady tone.
Q5XX TIL Human fingers can feel objects as small as 13 nanometers. “This means that if your finger were the size of the Earth you could feel the difference between houses and cars.”
ral1 TIL that one of the first recognized instances of internet democracy was seen in 1998 when Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf, a regular on Howard Stern, was voted #1 as a write in for People’s “50 Most Beautiful People.” He beat out Leondardo Dicaprio by over 215K votes.
epkA5 TIL in 1811, Frances Burney wrote a first-hand account of her mastectomy performed without anesthesia. “When the dreadful steel was plunged into my breast…cutting through veins, arteries, flesh, nerves…I needed no injunctions not to restrain my cries.”