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TIL that on 9/11 a 5th airliner was presumed to be hijacked because the pilot changed the squawk code to 7500, which indicated a hijacking. Despite being a mistake, the airliner was diverted to Canada and was escorted there by US F-15s.

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gw79 TIL the Equestrian statue of the Duke of Wellington has a traffic cone on the head. This is because every time it is removed, people replace it.
R7ZK6 TIL that This American Life recently became the first recipient of a Pulitzer Prize awarded for audio journalism. For context, the Pulitzer Prize was established in 1917 and the first radio broadcast was in 1920. 100 years and never awarded to a radio show.
5KNR TIL Agatha Christie’s novel “Elephants Can Remember” reveals distinct signs of Alzheimer’s onset, e.g., 20% fewer words or ⅕ of her vocabulary lost; 6 times more use of nonspecific words such as “thing”, and a sharp drop in “idea density”. That novel’s last line is “Maybe it’s OK not to remember.”.
699D7 TIL that Paul McCartney in 1967 once let a man who claimed to be Jesus Christ into his home and a recording session for The Beatles song 'Fixing a Hole'
P1MvG TIL Eating every course seperately is Service à la russe. Before this meals were service à la française where all courses were served at once. Ambassador Alexander Kurakin introduced Service à la russe to France in 1810 and it became the norm by the 1880s.