› added 8 years ago

128

TIL that Singapore Airlines flight 21 which had the longest non-stop flight (18 hours), from Singapore to New Jersey, had special lockers on the plane to store corpses if people died en route since the flight path over the Pacific Ocean and North Pole meant the plane couldn’t land if someone died.

Read more wikipedia.org

via ift.tt

R7oX9 TIL in Jan 2011, a pilot mistook Venus for an oncoming aircraft and sent his plane into an emergency dive to avoid a midair collision.
0wZ5A TIL A programmer at Apple kept working for three months after his project was canceled, simply because he thought the work was interesting and wanted to finish. Apple employees helped his cause by sneaking him into the building, and the project (a graphing calculator) was successfully released.
VMngQ TIL Alzheimer's can't be "officially" diagnosed until after death. They have to confirm diagnosis with autopsy. So essentially they say a person has "dementia." The proteins involved still can't be detected without the autopsy. Today new methods can diagnose it with a 90% accuracy rate though
OGoXR TIL that dayta is more British & dahta is more American. I've always pronounced data as dayta, particularly as a Star Trek fan growing up. Living in the UK now, watching an American reality competition show, was surprised that most of them pronounced it as dahta & had to check on my stereotypes.
MeLNV TIL that one of the writers/creators of "Peanut Butter Jelly Time", Jermaine Fuller, died in an 11-hour police standoff. His brother-in-law, Snoop Dog, attempted to calm him down but to no avail.