› added 1 year ago

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TIL that Benjamin Franklin's extra-marital son, William Franklin, was a staunch loyalist who was the last colonial governor of New Jersey. After a two year imprisonment ended via prisoner exchange, he directed loyalist forces in New York before fleeing to Britain at the end of the war.

gZOD TIL that on 9/11 some jet fighters took to the air without live ammunition, knowing that to prevent the hijackers from striking their intended targets, the pilots might have to intercept and crash their fighters into the hijacked planes, ejecting at the last moment.
Y707B TIL according to a report, the media shows ageing as a societal burden, with the elderly described as a “grey tsunami”, “demographic cliff” and “demographic timebomb”. Often the elderly are depicted as villains, unfairly consuming too many of resources
0E7v TIL minutes before the Halifax Explosion, (one of the largest non-nuclear, man-made explosions) a dispatcher named Vince Coleman returned to his station to send a warning telegram, saving 300 lives at the cost of his own.
6E0QY TIL about William Price, a Welsh doctor known for his nationalism, labor advocacy, nudism, and practice of Neo-Druidism. He believed his destiny was to liberate Wales from English rule, thought socks were unhygienic, and named two of his children Iesu Grist, which is Welsh for Jesus Christ.
8ebKK TIL that when Dan Shechtman discovered quasiperiodic crystals in 1982, he got mocked and shamed. Nobel prize winner Linus Pauling spoke of the discovery, saying "There is no such thing as quasicrystals, only quasi-scientists." In 2011 Shechtman won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery.