› added 4 years ago

82

TIL that Popeye was inspired by the looks of a polish man named Frank "Rocky" Fiegel

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

wL9WW TIL Chroniclers of Germanic peoples traced the ancestry of their kings back to the god Wōden (Odin). If such descents were true, Queen Elizabeth II would be a descendant of Woden, via the kings of Wessex.
rROBo TIL The term slush fund was originally a nautical term: the slush was the fat or grease skimmed from the top of the cauldron when boiling salted meat. Ship officers would sell the fat to tallow makers, with the resulting proceeds kept as a slush fund for making small purchases for the ship's crew.
pY5l8 TIL Glass fiber dresses were a fad for a few years in the 1890s, and the NYT even predicted they’d be more popular
MeXK TIL that a medical technician invented Rapex to help prevent rape in South Africa. This product resembles a female condom with sharp teeth. Any man who attempts to rape a woman impales himself on the teeth and must go to hospital to have the Rapex removed, hopefully coinciding with an arrest.
6EEaJ Yes, it’s true that most jetliners are certified for automatic landings, called “autolands” in pilot-speak. But in practice they are rare. Fewer than 1 percent of landings are performed automatically, and the fine print of setting up and managing one of these landings is something I could talk about all day. If it were as easy as pressing a button, I wouldn’t need to practice them twice a year in the simulator or periodically review those tabbed, highlighted pages in my manuals. In a lot of respects, automatic landings are more work-intensive than those performed by hand. The technology is there if you need it for that foggy arrival in Buenos Aires with the visibility sitting at zero, but it’s anything but simple.