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TIL The best pictures we have of the Mt. St. Helens eruption came from a photographer that was close to the eruption. He realized there was nothing he could do, so he took as many pictures as he could, put his camera back in the bag, and used his body to protect it from the ash.

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4kVMo TIL U.S. Air Force Captain Chuck Yeager becomes the first person to fly faster than the speed of sound, at the controls of his rocket-powered Bell X-1, named “Glamorous Glennus” for his wife, breaks the sound barrier. Yeager achieves a top speed of Mach 1.07 before descending safely.
PYmeO TIL: Suckling pigs are often slaughtered by slamming them into the wall or floor, a process known as "thumping".
vGw4 TIL That African Time is a real thing. Instead of being a Time Zone, it is a perceived cultural tendency, in most parts of Africa, toward a more relaxed attitude to time.
XlQ6 TIL That there’s an organization of 200 plus millionaires that formed a political group that actively pushes for political equality regardless of wealth, higher wages for workers and tries to get the wealthy to pay their fair share of taxes.
Y8ar TIL when trees evolved, it took 60 mil. years for fungi to evolve the ability to break down lignin. Trees fell over and didn’t decompose, storing vast amounts of carbon, resulting in an oxygen-rich atmosphere that favored enormous insects; burning in massive fires; and producing our stores of coal.