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TIL John Aaron, a NASA flight controller, not only saved Apollo 12 after it was struck by lightning, but also saved the Apollo 13 crew by developing a unique power up sequence to allow a safe reentry.

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6E5o8 TIL Cornelius Vanderbilt was the richest man in the world with net worth of US $215 billion (inflation-adjusted 2016). In comparison Jeff Bezos's net worth is US$137 billion (January 2019). By a 1973 family reunion, not one of the 120 Vanderbilt descendants present was a millionaire.
E1K6P TIL monks in Westminster Abbey would eat 6,000 calories a day normally and 4,500 a day when "fasting". They drank a gallon of beer and 10 oz of wine and ate 2.25 lbs of bread, 5 eggs, and 2 lbs of meat or fish a day. Many monks became obese and suffered related conditions.
pQdp TIL that in 2013, someone in Chicago placed a $600 million trade 2 milliseconds after the Fed publicly announced they wouldn’t slow bond purchases. The markets skyrocketed and the trader made lots of money. There was one problem though. It would have taken 7 milliseconds for light to get to Chicago.
Y4LA TIL Since the release of ‘Captain Phillips’, there has been controversy over its portrayal of Phillips, with several crew members claiming that he was not the hero presented in the film, and that he was at least partly at fault for an “insistence on being fast and making money.
8aXlZ TIL that, in 1922, Governor of Indiana Warren McCray was offered $10,000 to allow the Ku Klux Klan to become chartered, but refused, the Klan later claimed he was involved in mail fraud, causing McCray to be found guilty and serve three years in prison, when he was paroled and later given a pardon