› added 8 years ago

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TIL the Hindenburg was designed for helium but the US had a monopoly on helium and banned its export

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yV5WM TIL there is a town called Bat Cave, North Carolina which is named after the largest known augen gneiss granite fissure cave in North America, and predates the creation of Batman
KOLO4 TIL: Orange peels helped revive a Costa Rican forest
4w0g TIL the second American in space had hayfever and was almost disqualified from astronaut training, until NASA realised the absence of pollen in space
gEQA TIL of Starfish. A 60’s US military experiment designed to see what would happen when a nuke was detonated 250 miles above Earth’s magnetic pole. It resulted in an EMP 900 miles wide, an intense artificial aurora, and a radiation belt that disabled 1/3 of the low orbit satellites and lasted 5 years.
xVlgb TIL that the composer of the Broadway musical RENT died hours before the first performance of the show. He would go on to win three Tony Awards and the Pulitzer Prize, but never got to see the show performed for an audience.