› added 9 years ago

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TIL President Roosevelt collapsed while being painted. He never regained consciousness before dying. The unfinished painting captures his last waking moment.

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KOMZ4 TIL that Oman has a strong tradition of Scottish bagpipe music, owing to their Sultan having served in a Scottish regiment of the British Army
R5Ba1 TIL the HJ Heinz Company was heavily into pickle production in the early 1900’s. So much so that they patented and used a specialized Pickle Tank rail car for shipping pickles.
Rvg7 TIL in 1983 a Russian radar detected the launch of Minuteman missiles by the U.S. The radar operator correctly identified the detection as a false alarm and is credited with averting a likely counterstrike by the Russians which would have started a nuclear war.
XEbAX TIL the astronomer Copernicus was buried in a cathedral in Poland, but the exact location of his remains were forgotten for centuries until they were re-discovered in 2005 under the cathedral floor.
9YyRD TIL that in 1956, F-11 Tiger fighter plane shot itself down because the plane was literally going faster than its own gunfire.