› added 4 years ago

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TIL the parachute was invented hundreds of years before the airplane, with some early parachute concepts dating all the way back to 1470

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9wOom TIL that the electricity bills of a Japanese bullet train on a 622km (386 mi) journey can be paid off with the ticket income of 16 paying-travelers on its 1,324 seats, or on average, just one passenger in each carriage.
nWypW TIL That James 1 of Scotland died was murdered after getting stuck in an escape tunnel he himself had blocked up three days earlier to prevent the loss of his tennis balls. As an avid player he often hit the balls out of the court and they would often be lost in the aforementioned sewer tunnel.
PYp6n Today I learned about Lychrel numbers. A Lychrel number is a natural number that cannot form a palindrome through the iterative process of repeatedly reversing its digits and adding the resulting numbers. For example 57+75 = 132, 132+231 = 363, a palindrome. There is no known sequence for 196
j6VNv TIL The reason "Baywatch" filmed sequences in slow motion is because they were short on money to finish the shows
XlNk TIL in 1988 George Lucas spoke out against the altering of films & importance to preserve original versions