› added 12 years ago

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TIL: The Ancient Egyptian civilisation existed for longer than the Western one has existed so far, and had run its course before the West was even born.

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BgJRW TIL that U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, known as a prankster, liked to frighten visitors to his ranch in Johnson City, Texas, by leading them on a raid in his Amphicar, directly into the lake on his property, while shouting that its brakes were malfunctioning.
oBQmA TIL the first recorded instance of human flight is of a Chinese prince named Yuan Huangtou, who was forced to participate in an experiment in which he was strapped to a kite and flown off a tower.
4o6a TIL in 1987 a 19 year old German flew a small plane across Russia to Moscow and landed it in Red Square without being detected by Soviet authorities.
0w4dR TIL that Saturn's rings stretch nearly 250,000 miles wide but are on average only 55 feet thick
D1xWr TIL of Lachhiman Gurung, A Nepalese Gurkha who lost his arm in battle but continued to fight with his bolt action rifle, single handedly holding off over 200 Japanese troops and killing 31 until the next morning.