› added 6 years ago

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TIL: in the late 1960s, US plane hijacking had become so commonplace, specifically requests to be down to Cuba, but the industry so resistant to security changes, that a suggestion was seriously proposed to build a fake Havana airport in southern Florida to fool the hijackers into capitulation

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7rbNb TIL that the “Star Spangled Banner,” the United States’ National Anthem, uses the exact melody of an old English drinking song called “To Anacreon in Heaven” which was popular among Americans in 1812
PenV TIL there is a village in the Netherlands comprised entirely of people with dementia. It’s been called a “Truman Show for the elderly.”
QJjr9 TIL that bullshit jobs are jobs - such as manufactured middle-management positions - which even the person doing it can’t really justify its existence, but have to pretend that there’s some reason for it to exist.
M74JV TIL OJ Simpson was considered for the role of the Terminator, but James Cameron did not feel he would be believable as a killer
wg7o TIL Carl Sagan was brought in to mediate an argument between Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke about what the aliens should look like at the end of “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Sagan suggested to not show them at all.