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TIL On April 16th, 1912 Harriet Quimby became the first woman to pilot an aircraft across the English Channel. Her accomplishment received little media attention, however, as the sinking of the RMS Titanic the day before consumed the interest of the public and filled newspapers.

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Wk8GA TIL of Arvīds Blūmentāls, a rumored prototype for Crocodile Dundee and Latvian Baron who deserted the Waffen-SS for the Foreign Legion before relocating to Australia. He hunted 10,000 crocodiles with his bare hands and lived in a hillside dugout so bizarre it was used in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome.
5YV8B TIL if Earth's entire atmosphere froze solid and fell to earth, it would form a snowy layer of nitrogen, oxygen, and argon 330 feet (100 m) thick.
awdVN TIL the Nazis tried to make a sun gun, or sonnengewehr. They would launch a 100-meter-wide concave mirror into space and use it to reflect sunlight onto the enemy, burning cities, boiling reservoirs and (pretty much) melting people.
b9Wy4 TIL in 1969 an experimental book named The Unfortunates was published. It shipped as a 'book in a box' consisting of 27 unbound sections with the first and last chapter specified. The remaining sections range from a single paragraph to 12 pages in length and are designed to be read in any order.
Yp0nG Til 12,000 Londoners died over 4 days in 1952 when a fog of pollution rolled in, leading to Great Britain’s Clean Air Act.