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TIL the film inside the SR-71’s camera was five inches wide and two miles long. Once a SR-71 returned, the photo-maintenance division removed the film and cut it into 500-foot long segments. Then they would put on surgical gloves and go up and down the lines, inspecting this massive roll of film.

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logW7 TIL Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire is a direct descendant of Pocahontas
XNjk TIL that in August 1967, the U.S. Defense Department published a 200 page report concluding that most American soldiers didn’t fully comprehend the Geneva Conventions. No actions were taken; the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam occurred 7 months later.
1aQED TIL, Johnny Cash was brutally attacked by an ostrich he kept in a wildlife park, it broke 2 ribs and slashed his stomach open. As a result of the pain pills he was prescribed, he fell back into drug addiction years after overcoming them.
KOMGE TIL WWII plastic surgeon Archibald McIndoe pioneered the use of saline baths as a treatment for burns after he noticed that pilots who crashed into the sea had faster rates of healing from burns than those who crashed on land
8aNea TIL The characterization of Emperor Palpatine in the Star Wars saga as an ambitious and ruthless politician dismantling a democratic republic to achieve supreme power is in part inspired by Julius Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Adolf Hitler. Other elements of the character come from Richard Nixon.