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TIL the US Air Force developed a top-secret plan to detonate a nuclear bomb on the moon as a display of military might at the height of the Cold War. The mathematical modelling for the explosion was done by Carl Sagan.

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xgNB TIL Phil Collins’ song Sussudio was based on a completely made up word. When he couldn’t think of actual lyrics to fill the line, he just left it in as the chorus and title.
gMxj9 TIL Astronaut James B. Irwin, who walked on the moon in 1971, later became a minister who was involved in six unsuccesseful expeditions to search for traces of Noah's Ark. Irwin had a history of heart trouble and was the first to die of the 12 men who walked on the moon
9wNED TIL that President Ulysses S. Grant was nearly bankrupted by a Ponzi scheme a year before his death, and was saved from near-destitution by partnering with Mark Twain on his memoirs
4kB0b TIL that, in 1604, King James I wrote ‘A Counterblaste to Tobacco’, in which he described smoking as a ‘custome lothesome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs
dXpE TIL that Gilbert Lewis, the man responsible for lewis dot structures was nominated for the Nobel Prize 35 times, the most nominations in history, and he didn’t win a single time.