› added 2 years ago

71

TIL that some countries imposed a Beard Tax and a token was required to be carried in public to show that it had been paid.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

BrEjD TIL that the highest absolute altitude ever achieved by a helicopter (12,440 m) resulted in the engines experiencing a flameout at peak altitude. The pilot then set the record for the longest autorotation used for the unpowered landing of a helicopter.
en9D TIL that the sum of all of the numbers on a roulette wheel is 666
BYed TIL in 1964, the US government hired two average physics PhDs to design an atom bomb based solely on publicly available information to see how easy it actually is.
0wn85 TIL Gino Bartali not only won the Tour de France twice, but also saved 800 Jewish lives during WW2 by smuggling counterfeit identity papers in his bike’s handlebars.
DKxp TIL that over 90% of the population of Canada lives within 100 miles of the U.S. border.