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TIL that Wilson the Volleyball from the movie Castaway was inspired when screenwriter William Broyles, Jr deliberately stranded himself for one week on an isolated beach in the Sea of Cortez in which a volleyball washed up on shore

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wLVJ7 Air turbulence will likely get worse as the planet warms
6Qol TIL Ranald Macdonald a Chinook/Scottish man, ventured to Japan despite knowing of the strict isolationist policy. He pretended to shipwreck on an island, where he was caught and sent to Nagasaki. There, he managed to convince the Daimyo that he could be of value as Japan’s first English teacher.
GAKO4 TIL when you cross a Zebra and a Donkey they make a Zonkey because they belong to the same genetic group but only when it is sired by a male Zebra with a female Donkey. If it's a male Donkey and female Zebra their offspring is known as a Zedonk.
7jeO TIL journalist Anne Royall refused to give John Quincy Adams his clothes while he was skinny-dipping unless she could interview him, and she became the first woman ever to interview a U.S. president.
Xde6 TIL that in 1915, scam artist Charles Hatfield convinced the town of San Diego that he could create rainfall using a secret mix of chemicals. The city offered to pay him $10,000 if he could end their drought, and the ‘result,’ a few days later, was the town’s worst flood of the 20th century.