› added 5 years ago

92

TIL that Air Transat Flight 236 lost both engines over the Atlantic, and set a glide record for a commercial airliner of 120km as the pilot successfully made an emergency landing at Lajes Air Base in the Azores.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

9YvAB TIL The USA paid more for the construction of Central Park (1876, $7.4 million), than it did for the purchase of the entire state of Alaska (1867, $7.2 million).
1anMO TIL that in 1945, at the United Nations Conference on International Organisation, the USSR requested that all 15 Soviet Republics be made members of the UN to better represent the people of the east. The US countered this by requesting that all 50 US states be made members of the UN.
EYw0 TIL Picasso’s La Reve was bought by Victor Ganz for $7000, over 20 times his monthly rent, then sold for $50 million to Steve Wynn, who put his elbow through it
e0R1E TIL that a 2002 episode of "The Twilight Zone" addressed the novikov self-consistency principle of time travel: a woman, played by Katherine Heigl, goes back in time to kill baby Hitler. She succeeds, but his mother adopts a child and raises him as Adolf. He grows up to lead the Nazi Party.
DV9r TIL That at least six air traffic controllers who dealt with two of the hijacked airliners on Sept. 11, made a tape recording that same day describing the events, but the tape was destroyed by a supervisor without anyone making a transcript or even listening to it.