› added 11 months ago

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TIL in July 1969, US Senator Ted Kennedy crashed his car into the sea after a party and left the scene, leaving Mary Jo Kopechne to drown, a young woman that could have been saved if help had been called that night.

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a8A0J TIL about a mass-produced 28-cylinder radial piston engine that was created during WWII and were made by hand before computer aided design or advanced 5-axis milling machines. It sported 71.5L outputting roughly 4,300 hp (3,200 kW)
j6g1X TIL about the UK’s 1833 Slavery Abolition Act: around 46,000 former slave owners were compensated by the government for lost “property” — a huge payout equivalent to billions today, making it one of Britain’s largest-ever state debts. No compensation was given to enslaved people themselves.
5YDAn TIL that Samuel Colt financed his invention and development of the revolver handgun by performing laughing gas demonstrations across the United States and Canada.
QxA6 TIL that newgrange in Ireland is older than both Stonehenge and the pyramids in Giza. On the morning of the winter solstice every year the rising sun shines down the entrance passageway and illuminates the burial chamber at the end. This only happens for a few minutes, once a year.
Z6oQ TIL the visual effects rendered in Interstellar used pages of theoretical equations from physicist Kip Thorne and gave new insights into gravitational lensing and accretion disks surrounding black holes that led to three published scientific papers.