› added 5 years ago

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TIL about "Black Sunday", Disneyland's disastrous opening day. Asphalt poured that morning melted in the 101 °F weather, counterfeit tickets added 3x the park's capacity, a plumbers' strike forced Walt to choose running toilets over water fountains, vendors ran out of food, rides were hijacked, etc.

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dD5dE TIL About the 'Balloon Hoax'. Perpetrated by Edgar Allen Poe in The New York Sun it purported to tell the story of a three day lighter than air balloon trip across the Atlantic. The story was revealed as a hoax two days later.
avJ0 TIL Artist Damien Hirst set an art auction record by selling one of his works for $19 million in 2007. The entire work is just a glass case with some random pharmaceutical pills in it.
dBk8 TIL of Tetris Syndrome, which is when you play a game too long and you start to dream about it, and hallucinate about it on the edges of your vision.
YYZW TIL A German pilot accidentally landed in Wales instead of France during WW2, was taken prisoner, then almost got shot by his guard in transport when the car hit a pothole
BrOod TIL Carlos was dubbed "The Jackal" by The Guardian after one of its correspondents reportedly spotted Frederick Forsyth's 1971 novel The Day of the Jackal near some of the fugitive's belongings