› added 7 years ago

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TIL that Aaron Burr went broke speculatively buying parcels of land in upstate New York. He did this while living on twenty-six acres in what would become some of downtown NYC's most prime real estate.

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mJko TIL: A POW during the Vietnam War named James Stockdale said to survive in such arduous conditions you must renounce optimism for stoicism. His optimistic fellow captives all died. Having a blindly optimistic view worsens your chances of survival. This is called ‘The Stockdale Paradox’.
b9pG4 TIL About Tom Tobin, famous american mountain man and bounty hunter. In 1863 Tobin hunted down one of americas first serial killers, Felipe Espinosa, who killed 32 innocent civilians before Tobin single handedly decapitated him and his accomplices. Tobin was paid with a Henry rifle for the killings.
gMmD9 TIL of the parasitic Massospora fungus which infects cicadas, replaces their genitals with a fungal stump, and hijacks their brains with amphetamines and/or psilocybin (the key chemical in hallucinogenic mushrooms), forcing them to mate non-stop and spread the fungal spores to infect other cicadas.
LkJYP TIL that without one of the first error handling scripts developed by NASA's Margaret Hamilton the onboard moon landing system would have experienced a critical error just 3 minutes before touchdown
E1087 TIL that the American flag deployed on the moon during the Apollo 11 mission was inserted only seven inches deep and was placed about 27 feet from the Eagle landing craft. As a result, it was blown over by the blast of the rocket exhaust during the takeoff back to Earth.