› added 7 years ago

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TIL that Maya Lin, designer of the Vietnam Wall, got a “B” in her architecture class for her design from her professor who also submitted a design for the wall - losing to his student.

xVGEg TIL that to avoid releasing the Watergate tapes to prosecutors, Nixon proposed that Democratic Senator John C. Stennis alone be able to listen to them. Stennis was both notoriously hard-of-hearing and heavily drugged after being shot earlier in the year. The offer was quickly rejected.
W7XPY TIL that the world's longest floating bridge spans Lake Washington in Seattle and is called the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge. It is 7,710 feet long, the concrete floating bridge is the longest floating bridge in the world carrying State Route 520 from Seattle to its eastern suburbs.
6Y8Z TIL that Thomas Jefferson tried for years to send a gigantic stuffed moose to a French count to counter claims that the North American climate made all animals (including people) weak and feeble
0dM8v TIL about Ocean Conservation Namibia which is a group of men who search daily for seals who have become entangled with fishing nets and other harmful things and rescue them. They would do the same for other animals but seals are the only ones they are able to get close enough to.
16B17 TIL that Kalawao County on the North Coast of Moloka'i in Hawaii is the smallest US County by area (12 sq miles of land) and 2nd smallest by population (82) after Loving County in Texas. It is a former Leper Colony that permits no new permanent residents and only allows visitors from official tours.