› added 5 years ago

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TIL that Plutonium is so toxic that if 500g of plutonium dust released into the air, it would be sufficient to kill nearly 2 million people. It is just due to heavy metal poison effects, not radioactivity. This makes the toxicity of plutonium roughly equivalent to that of nerve gas.

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DQodj TIL The M-497 Black Beetle was an experimental jet-powered railcar test bed of the NY Central Railroad, developed and tested in 1966 in the USA. Even with this spectacular performance, and being built relatively cheaply using existing parts, the project wasn't considered viable commercially.
jYVE TIL Beetlejuice was only in 17.5 minutes of his own 1.5 hour movie.
WkNJ4 TIL that the Captain of the USS Indianapolis was court-martialed for its' sinking in 1945. In 1996, a history project by a sixth grader cleared his name.
4kRZa TIL Ahmed Gabr set the deepest scuba dive of all time in 2014, reaching a depth of 1,090 feet. He spent almost a decade preparing for the dive, which took only 15 minutes to descend but over 13 hours to ascend back to the surface.
PYMrO TIL Paul Bettany proposed to Jennifer Connelly after 9/11. The two were not dating at the time. They’ve been married since 2003.