› added 5 months ago

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TIL There's a Federal Railroad Administration which allows you to report when and where trains have blocked a crossing for unreasonable amounts of time.

Read more fra.dot.gov

via reddit.com

QJORX TIL that in the late 1960s, airlines Air India commissioned famous artist Salvador Dali to design an ashtray for the airline. Dali agreed but asked for an elephant as payment. A 2-year-old baby elephant named "big baby" was flown from Bangalore to Cadaques, a small Catalonian town where Dali Lived.
9ewD TIL that in 1942, business leaders in Winnipeg, Canada organized an “If day” where they simulated a Nazi invasion and occupation of the city. The fear generated during the event was a very successful fundraising tool, which managed to raise over 3 million Canadian dollars for the war effort.
loa47 TIL that the U.S. only spends 12% of its total budget on military, despite commonly held notions that it spends upwards of 40 - 70%.
RO1 TIL John Wilkes Booth’s brother, Edwin Booth, saved Abraham Lincoln’s son, Robert Lincoln, from getting hit by a train.
m1kyP TIL that countries around the world use planes, drones, and even ground-based operations in a technique called Cloud Seeding to add various salts to clouds to introduce hygroscopic particles, which increases rain particles, to increase rain production in dryer areas