› added 7 years ago

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TIL that on September 11th, 2001, Officer John Perry of the NYPD went to headquarters to file retirement paperwork. When he heard the explosion at the world trade center he immediately responded and was later killed when one of the towers collapsed. He was the only off-duty officer killed on 9/11.

PYwwZ TIL in 1972, Nintendo launched the "Lefty RX", a remote-controlled car that could ONLY make left turns due to a deliberately cheap design. It ended up being a tremendous success, and influenced Nintendo focusing on fun over next-gen-tech in future video game consoles.
loB8G TIL that blood passes through the kidneys at a rate of 1.1 Liters per minute. The human body has about 5 Liters of blood. This means your entire blood gets filtered by your kidneys every 5 minutes.
vPwaD TIL that, excluding the Civil War, World War II had the highest percentage of U.S. military fatalities, with about 2.5% of the 16.1 million Americans who served losing their lives. This was followed closely by the Vietnam War, where approximately 2.16% of those who served died.
mxVgp TIL RCA spent 17 years trying to find a way to put movies on vinyl records. In 1981 they finally achieved this, marketing the SelectaVision system. Unfortunately by the time they finished researching the system, someone had invented the VHS video tape.
d8l0B TIL that Ostracism, intentionally excluding people, is derived from the Ancient Greek practice of temporarily expelling citizens they thought were a threat to society. Voters would scratch the name of the person to be expelled on broken pieces of pottery, called in Ancient Greek, "ostrakon."