› added 12 years ago

104

TIL that 12 cyanide pills were kept in the cockpit of the Enola Gay, and pilots were instructed to take them if the mission was compromised during the bombing of Hiroshima

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VMG4 TIL Playboy founder Hugh Hefner is the cousin of former U.S. president George W. Bush.
5Agn TIL letters of the alphabet being referred to as “uppercase” and “lowercase” originated from the printing press. Typesetters would store all the individual letters in two cases. The capital letters were stored in the Upper Case and the rest were stored in the lower.
GY77g TIL butterfly knives originated in the Philippines after WWII as a product marketed to American soldiers.
Jx5k TIL that in Indian elections no voter is expected to travel more than 2km to a polling station. This sees an entire team setting up a full station for a single voter in the Gir forest.
N7AYE TIL, Ziprider, the world's longest zipline, located in Copper Canyon Mexico, is ~1.5 miles long and lets you travel at a speed of ~85 miles per hour.