› added 2 months ago

10

TIL Oliver Stone started writing the screenplay for Platoon on July 4, 1976 after a fireworks display triggered his Vietnam War flashbacks.

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OoMQe TIL during the battle of Arnhem, Major Digby Tatham-Warter brought an umbrella and put it to good use, stopping an armoured car by poking the driver in the eyes with his umbrella. When a fellow soldier told him "that thing won't do you any good", he replied "Oh my goodness Pat, but what if it rains?
QpJ6 TIL Gerber made a failed line of food for adults called Singles very similar to baby food
9wM7D TIL that the two-man astronaut crews on the first four space shuttle missions wore special launch suits and sat in military jet-style seats that allowed them to eject at altitudes as high as 80,000 feet. These were no longer used once the shuttle was declared "operational" for future NASA missions.
X0eW8 TIL that the Castle Bravo nuclear test was 3x as powerful as the designers expected. This was due to unexpected fission of lithium-7, which greatly increased the yield of the other nuclear reactions.
p8Gv8 TIL final battle scene in "The Last Jedi" was filmed on Salar de Uyuni, the world's largest salt flat in Bolivia. By some estimates more than 10 billion tons of salt cover the region today and it's home to more than 50 percent of the world's lithium reserves