› added 4 years ago

56

TIL about Chad Pregracke, who,when he was 23, after witnessing immense levels of trash on the Mississippi River in IL, started a nonprofit to address it. Since then, they have removed 5,000 tons of trash from the Mississippi and it’s tributaries.

Read more livinglandsandwaters.org

via reddit.com

awEYM TIL that time of flight (ToF) sensors in our modern smartphones actually bounce a signal off the object in front of it and record how long the signal takes to return to the sensor in order to measure distance, kind of like radar
1aBbW TIL that "arrack" is a type of alcoholic spirit from South Asia/Indonesia fermented from the sap of coconut flowers or sugarcane. Arrack predates all "New World" spirits and is the parent of rum.
oRnkY TIL that the first Tay Bridge collapsed in a winter gale in December 1879, just nineteen months after opening, plunging a passenger train into the Firth of Tay and killing all 75 people on board
loJ6B TIL Frank Zappa was a futurist who was enthusiastic for the possibility of holographic imagery. So much so that he recorded footage of himself in the early 70s with the intention to be used when technology got to that point. A Frank Zappa holographic tour using that footage starts next year.
kJ4Zg TIL that in 2005 burglars stole $71.6 million from a bank in Fortaleza, Brazil by setting up a fake landscaping company near the bank and digging a 256ft tunnel beneath two city blocks to the bank over 3 months. Neighbors noticed vanloads of soil removed daily but assumed it was business-related.