› added 9 years ago

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TIL that after a 1946 plane crash, Howard Hughes decided he did not like the design of the hospital bed he was laying in. He called in his engineers and had them design a new bed that would allow someone with severe burns to move freely. It became the prototype for the modern hospital bed.

QJJkk TIL about a French law that demands that manufacturers display how long their appliances will last. French companies have to inform consumers how long spare parts for the product will be available or risk a fine of up to €15,000 (£11,000).
0weA1 TIL that cosmic dust, micro-meteor remnants from the birth of our solar system, falls all over the world at a rate of 4,000 tons annually. We literally eat it, inhale it and live in it every day.
j6RaX TIL The radiomessage PAN-PAN is the international standard urgency signal that someone aboard a boat, ship, aircraft, or other vehicle uses to declare that they need help and that the situation is urgent, but does not pose an immediate danger to the vessel or anyone's life
0wPx5 TIL 'Hello' as a greeting is credited to Thomas Edison. Hello likely derived from hullo, a expression of surprise, but was seen by Edison as good greeting for telephone conversations. Alexander Graham Bell initially used Ahoy (as used on ships) as a telephone greeting, but it didn't take off.
70Yb TIL of the Photon Sphere, a spherical region of space where gravity is strong enough that photons are forced to travel in orbits. If you were to stand in this region and look straight ahead you would see the back of your head.