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TIL Before Kelly Johnson designed the SR-71, he designed the first twin engine American fighter, the P-38 Lightning. Despite starting off with a terrible record, it ended up being used on all sorts of special missions, including bouncing a 500lb bomb through the front door of German Headquarters.

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VMVA4 TIL of the 2007 Carancas impact event, where a meteor crashed into the ground near the village of Carancas, Peru. 100-200 people who got near the crash site fell ill, and there were reports of livestock dying in the area. The cause of this was determined to be arsenic poisoning.
7r5Mr Today I Learned that the image of Smokey the Bear undergoes more enforced regulation than the American flag. This is not hyperbole, the US government has to give explicit permission for anyone to have a costume, and does not allow Smokey The Bear to be depicted in any way that is demeaning to him.
b9KXp TIL in 2005, the Smurfs were featured in a UNICEF ad in which their village was bombed by war planes and the Smurfs were shown burned and crushed to death under debris. It only aired after 9 PM to prevent children from seeing it.
oBVNL TIL Louis Zamperini was an olympic athlete, and a bombardier in the US Air Corps. He survived two crash landings, was afloat on a raft for 47 days in the ocean, survived 'Execution Island' in Japan, and was horribly abused in a POW (Prisoner of War) Camp. Louis lived for 97 years, and died in 2014.
WD8 TIL that lunch was not thought of as a meal until the 1850s or later