› added 10 years ago

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TIL that Fort Jefferson, a massive but unfinished coastal fortress in the Florida Keys, is composed of over 16 million bricks and is the largest masonry structure in the Americas

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0wQMy TIL Jerry Zucker, the director of Airplane! and Top Secret as well as a writer for Naked Gun, was the director for Ghost (1990) with Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore, and Whoopi Goldberg
j09a TIL that in 1973 science historian James Burke predicted the widespread use of computers for business decisions, the creation of metadata banks of personal information, and changes in human behaviour, such as greater willingness to reveal personal information to strangers
J1ne8 TIL that there is a World Championship for Microsoft Excel, (an e-sport!) which consists of solving mathematical problems and complex financial models on Excel quicker than your opponents. The 2023 winner, 'Andrew the Annihilator', got a wrestling-style belt, a trophy, and $3,000.
6rd7 TIL When an English police officer was stabbed he remarked “A scene from the film Hot Fuzz kept rolling through my mind. It was where policeman Simon Pegg gets stabbed and he says ‘It’s the most painful thing I’ve ever experienced.’- It literally is the most painful thing I’ve ever experienced.”
d8mXQ TIL that Steve Irwin paid for one of his security guards to go and train MMA in the USA, that security guard, Kyle Noke, would go on to fight in the UFC and credits Steve Irwin as a major reason why he achieved his dreams.