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TIL During the Soviets' attempts to shoot down Francis Gary Powers' U2 spy plane in 1960, a Soviet fighter pilot was mistakenly hit by a Surface-to-Air Missile and died from his injuries. His death was hidden from the Soviet people for over 30 years.

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b6jQ0 TIL that between 1230 and 1561, many English towns had a street called “Gropecunt Lane,” named after prostitution centered on those areas. Many of these streets have since been renamed to “Grape Lane.”
E1PAV TIL of “Tokyo Rose” aka “Orphan Ann” aka Iva Toguri D'Aquino who in WWII used double entendres to make a farce of Japanese propaganda on her radio show “The Zero Hour” and used part of her $7 a month paycheck to smuggle food to POWs
JYeyk TIL the role of "alpha" in primates is not always determined by physical size or strength, but by collecting resources, forming political alliances, and intelligence. Some primates even experience increased stress from being in the alpha role.
neQmo TIL That in 1978, a group of 18 farmers from Xiaogang Village in Anhui Province, China, secretly agreed to abandon collectivism and adopt private property rights by subdividing their collective farm. The change resulted in a harvest larger than the previous five years combined.
wopNY TIL Julius Schmid arrived in NYC as a penniless, partially paralyzed German immigrant. He got a job at a sausage maker where he started selling the leftover animal intestines as condoms. He grew this into a multi-million dollar business eventually being named "the undisputed king of condoms".