› added 4 years ago

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TIL that in 2018, Andrew Douglas Macintosh, a 64-year-old corporate executive from Brisbane, Australia, was arrested for repeatedly defecating on his neighbors' lawns. The neighbors banded together to catch the culprit, photographing Macintosh in the act; bent over, holding a piece of toilet paper.

v1WXK Flying a helicopter on Mars is so damn hard but NASA made it possible. For the first flight, the helicopter took off, climbed to about 10 feet (3 meters) above the ground, hovered in the air briefly, completed a turn, and then landed. It was a major milestone: the very first powered flight in the extremely thin atmosphere of Mars, and, in fact, the first such flight in any world beyond Earth. Being able to fly a helicopter or drone on Mars is very important as they can cover 24 kilometers in an hour. By the way, Curiosity took nine years to travel less than 25 kilometers.
aJgN TIL that in the 18th century there was a “moral panic” because of the spread of the reading of novels.
VMAWk TIL that the phrase "blood is thicker than water" originally meant the opposite. The full phrase is “The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.” Meaning bonds formed by choice are stronger than those of simple genetics.
OGP0Y TIL that only $2 was budgeted toward safety training for the crew of MV Sewol, the South Korean passenger ferry which sank in 2014 killing 306 people. This was used to pay for a paper certificate.
9WXM TIL - Aluminum foil starts out as an 8 ton block that’s rolled down gradually until it yields 8 miles of foil