› added 8 years ago

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TIL, test pilot Tex Johnson did a barrel roll in a prototype 707 during a first look at a an air show with a lot of potential customers in attendance. When his boss called him into his office and said “What the hell were you doing?”, he replied “Selling Airplanes.”.

b6950 TIL The Abu Simbel Temple from Ancient Egypt was moved brick-by-brick to a new location to protect from flood water
4PEN TIL that the Higgs boson, commonly refered to as the “God Particle”, was originally intended to be name the “goddamn particle”, but Leon Lederman’s publisher asked that it be changed. Higgs, an atheist, was unhappy with the nickname because he thought the term “might offend people who are religious”
yQKmM TIL of the Diverging Diamond Interchange; a type of highway interchange in which the directional roadways of the non freeway road switch over each other either temporarily using under/overpasses or traffic signals, making it simpler to enter and exit the freeway.
R7D8j TIL that a calendar system for Mars has already bean devised for potential future settlement. The calendar contains 24 months of 27 or 28 days each, named after Latin and Sanskrit constellation names.
v1OKr TIL after 30 WWII veterans in their mid-nineties were shown ‘Dunkirk,’ the general consensus among them was that they loved the film and thought it captured events very accurately, but “thought the soundtrack was louder than the actual bombardment.” The comment amused Nolan greatly.