› added 1 year ago

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TIL two families escaped East Germany in a home made hot air balloon

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L8v0 TIL of Vladimir Komarov. When the Soyouz Spacecraft catastrophically failed in orbit, he impossibly managed to manually pilot the craft to re-enter Earth’s orbit, only to perish because both the main AND backup parachutes failed. He died “cursing those who had put him inside a botched spaceship”.
PYKLG TIL During development of the game Wing Commander, a memory error would occur when exiting the game. They didn't have enough time to fix the error before shipping so they changed the error message to "Thanks for playing Wing Commander."
e0dV6 TIL, that Coke was the first soft drink to be consumed in Space when astronauts aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger tested the “Coca-Cola Space Can” on July 12, 1985. The Coca-Cola Company also installed the 'Space Dispenser' on the Space Shuttle Discovery, which was first Space soft drink equipment
vPmx TIL use of the word “Faggot” on Twitter drops ~25% on Saturdays
GYW91 TIL that in the 1908 London Olympics, the Russian team arrived 12 days late and missed their most favoured event because they were still following the Julian calendar rather than the Gregorian calendar.