› added 3 months ago

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TIL that during World War I, armies used artillery sound ranging by timing how long gunfire took to reach multiple microphones, with operators using stopwatches to calculate the enemy gun’s position through triangulation, decades before radar-based detection became practical.

xVLe0 TIL that Jonathan Freeman, the original voice actor for Jafar in Aladdin, also plays Jafar in the Broadway version of Aladdin. That makes him the only actor in the Disney broadway shows to play the animated and real life version of a Disney character.
8kXV TIL that FedEx’s current CEO and founder Frederick W. Smith didn’t have enough money to keep the company afloat, he took the remaining 5k and brought it to Vegas and by Monday morning they had 32k, enough to fuel their planes and stay in business long enough for another round of funding.
4kPno TIL that the song of the European Robin can be as loud as 104 decibels, or as loud as a motorcycle. A cooing dove is only about 45 decibels, which is quieter than normal human conversation.
8eWj4 TIL Weird Al was set to a series of Star Wars parody sketches where he would interact with the movie via green-screening, but Mark Hamill refused to allow usage of any footage with him in it, despite already getting approval from Lucas and Alec Guinness, so the idea was scrapped
d65Q TIL Missoula, Montana has a whole “underground city” tunnel network that was used for bootlegging and prostitution rings that is still accessible today.