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TIL Alan B. Shepard Jr., the first American in space, was grounded from spaceflight for the next 10 years due to an inner-ear disorder. When he was finally cured and chosen to walk on the moon, NASA headquarters grounded him again - from Apollo 13.

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via reddit.com

0d841 TIL that Julia “Butterfly” Hill, an environmental activist, lived in a 1500-year-old California redwood tree named Luna, 180 feet (55 mm) off the ground for 738 days to prevent Pacific Lumber Company from chopping it down. Her efforts were successful in saving the tree.
epEJE TIL the first commercial airplane crash that killed more than 100 people happened in 1956 over the Grand Canyon. A Douglas DC-7 hit a Lockheed Super Constellation and crashed into a ravine slope at over 480 mph, while the Lockheed disintegrated into a cliff. All 128 people on the planes died.
NXbXQ TIL: When falling in the standard belly-to-Earth position, an average estimate of terminal velocity for skydivers is 120 mph (200 km/h), and a falling person will reach terminal velocity after about 12 seconds, falling some 450 m (1,500 ft) in that time.
Z88xG TIL that in 1981, after Ronald Reagan's assassination attempt, when he was rushed to the hospital he told the doctors before they all operated on him, "I hope you are all republicans."
deYZ TIL that Robert M. Losey, the first American military casualty of WWII had two master’s degrees from Cal Tech and was described by professors as “‘perhaps the most brilliant student’ who ever attended the school”