› added 13 years ago

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TIL on September 21, 1997, a crew member aboard the USS Yorktown accidentally divided by zero and caused a systems failure that stopped the propulsion of the ship.

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8kEb TIL In 1945, a B-25 bomber pilot crashed into the Empire State Building’s elevator shaft, snapping the cable. By the time the carriage reached the bottom, a thousand feet of cable had piled up beneath it acting like a spring, which allowed the lone occupant in the car to escape injured but alive.
WvRY TIL that a StingRay tracker mimics a wireless carrier cell tower in order to force nearby phones & cellular data devices to connect to it then it can extract & write to metadata on your device and an operator can conduct specific surveillance operations on just the target device; and it’s legal.
oRNkY TIL The first helicopter rescue occurred April 21-25 1944 when a Sikorsky R-4 rescued 4 British soldiers from behind Japanese lines after their transport plane crashed.
XEym8 TIL that pet dogs (or wolves) have been a part of human culture since before writing, alcohol, or even agriculture.
Br1Zk TIL the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon is where one stumbles upon some obscure piece of information—often an unfamiliar word or name—and soon afterwards encounters the same subject again, often repeatedly.