› added 12 years ago

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TIL the hull of the USS Arizona has been leaking oil since the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.

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xEr7 TIL That A Neutron Star Named PSR J1748-2446ad Spins Over 716 Times a Second. The speed at it’s equator is 24% the Speed of light or 70,000KM/s.
x0L7 TIL that the bascules (the road that opens) of Tower Bridge in London are typically only raised to an angle sufficient for a vessel to safely pass under the bridge. However, if the Monarch is on board, they are raised fully no matter the size of the vessel.
oRlAR TIL, the Pan-European Picnic was a peaceful demonstration in 1989 where the border between Austria and Hungary was open for 3 hours and It was the largest refugee movement since the Berlin Wall was built. It started the chain reaction of the Warsaw Pact dissolving and the end of the Cold War.
QNR7L TIL that the novelization of Star Wars: A New Hope was actually published several months before the release of the film, rather than the other way around
OG0a7 TIL almost 100 years before railroads, England’s Bridgewater Canal made it so one horse could pull 30 tons of coal, dropping the fuel price in half. It was so successful that it created a 1770’s “canal mania” starting the Industrial Revolution.