› added 1 year ago

48

TIL Airports use ultrahigh pressure washing trucks to remove rubber from runways. When a plane lands, the tires are not spinning and drag, emitting a puff of smoke. The friction built up causes the rubber to polymerize and harden, leaving rubber which needs to be periodically removed

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

mxKEP TIL that the Statue of Liberty was orginally intended for the Suez Canal. When the Canal neared completion, the sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi requested to build a sculpture he named "Egypt Bringing light to Asia" at the canal's entrance. When he was denied, he went with his ideas to New York.
vPvyD TIL Very little of Franz Kafka's works were published during his lifetime and he burned 90% of his work. Works like The Trial and The Castle were saved when the executioner of Kafka's will ignored Kafka's request to have his remaining works destroyed.
yVYLV TIL about the Four Thieves Vinegar Collective, an anarchist collective teaching people how to make DIY versions of expensive pharmaceuticals at a fraction of the cost. Four Thieves Vinegar Collective call what they do “right to repair for your body.”
JYxA8 TIL that in terms of the average number of steps required to link actors to other actors, Kevin Bacon is only the 543rd ranked actor in Hollywood history. The actors with the lowest average number of steps are Christopher Lee, Harvey Keitel, Christopher Plummer, Michael Caine, and Donald Sutherland
ADvwa TIL that, a year before the end of WW I, Germany lodged an official complaint with the United States over the issuing of Winchester M97 "Trench Broom" shotgun to its' troops. So much so that the German military issued a kill order towards any troops carrying either shotguns or shotgun ammunition.