› added 12 years ago

214

TIL that there’s a town in Brazil that powers its streetlights by having convicts pedal bicycles attached to generators.

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1ar7r TIL when the U.S. refused to sell jet fighters to them in the early 80s due to treaties and pressure from China, Taiwan developed and produced their own, the Indigenous Defense Fighter (IDF).
78g0x TIL the first time that a sighting of orcas killing a great white shark in Australian waters was documented was by a group of 23 tourists while shark cage diving. The group watched as a pod of 4 adults and 2 calves would herd the shark to the surface and slam it until the hunt was completed.
0wk55 TIL That there was a design flaw in the Huygens lander's communications system. Scientists were unable to make a firmware update on the Cassini Spacecraft, so they plotted an alternative orbital trajectory that would use the Doppler effect to correct the programming error.
neZQ7 TIL the National Park Service has officially advised against sacrificing slower friends in a bear attack, ‘even if the friendship has run its course’
yjEJ TIL that the Grand Mosque of Paris provided refuge and muslim IDs for Jews trying to escape the clutches of the axis powers and the holocaust during WW II.