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TIL the 16-year-old son of a pilot was permitted to sit in the cockpit of an Aeroflot flight while it was on autopilot. However, he disengaged the autopilot, causing a chain of events that resulted in the plane crashing and the death of all 63 passengers and 12 crew members on board.

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GMJ5 TIL An Australian beetle almost went extinct because the males couldn’t stop trying to mate with discarded brown beer bottles, thinking they were totally hot female beetles.
WlJB TIL in 2014 a British sniper in Afghanistan killed six insurgents with a single bullet after hitting the trigger switch of a suicide bomber whose device then exploded.
D1E6Y TIL - Battle of Machias was an early naval engagement of the American Revolutionary War a small town militia captured an armed sloop and two merchant ships. Two years later the British tried it again with 1,000 men but were beaten off.
Eg6wd TIL Jack Parsons, a pioneer rocket engineer and inventor of the rocket engines later used in the apollo program was also a passionate occultist. One of his rituals, aimed to summon a sex goddess involved Parsons jerking off to magical tablets while listening to a violin concerto
Br8PW TIL only 3 people have technically died in space. In 1971, the Soyuz 11 crew was killed at an altitude of 104 miles when the cabin depressurized. The re-entry seemed to go off without a hitch. But recovery crews quickly discovered the crew inside dead, with blood streaming from their noses and ears.