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TIL of Dr. Story Musgrave, a NASA astronaut who made history on STS-80 by not getting into his seat before re-entry. He instead stood up on the flight deck "surfing" the Space Shuttle while it decelerated from 17,000mph to 0mph. He is the only person to have seen re-entry plasma with his bare eyes.

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KO4BQ TIL 'Nothing But Gingerbread Left' is a story about a song, designed to damage the Nazi war effort. It was so catchy that anybody who heard it could think of nothing else. It impacted German morale. The story ends with Hitler unable to deliver a speech because of the song in his head.
GmZ1 TIL that almost every renowned philosopher of Ancient Greece and Rome experienced what we know as “tripping” by being an initiates in the cult of Demeter. Initiates went through an annual rite of passage involving ergot, the founding compound of LSD.
BrbKx TIL that the largest discovery of Viking ships was made during the excavations for the expansion of the Roskilde Viking Ship Museum in Denmark
6mEw TIL in 1993, The Barbie Liberation Organization challenged gender stereotypes by switching the voice boxes of hundreds of Barbie and G.I. Joe dolls and ‘reverse shoplifting’ them back into stores. Barbies would yell, “Eat lead, Cobra!” while G.I. Joes would ask, “Want to go shopping?”.
9Yx4X TIL Stephen Hawking liked "The Theory Of Everything" so much that he allowed the filmmakers to use his trademarked computerized voice on it. He called the film "broadly true" and emailed the filmmakers that there were certain points when he thought he was watching himself, which left him tearful.