› added 5 years ago

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TIL that in south London in 1864, Thomas Webster Rammell built an atmospheric railway for passenger transportation, called Crystal Palace Pneumatic Railway, that went around 39.6 km/h (24.6 mph) through a 2.7x3m tunnel just by varying the air pressure in the tunnel before/behind the railway wagon.

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ne5vY TIL The English vocabulary makes it very difficult to describe smells - we can only describe odors by comparing the smell to other things
BrKar TIL: Because the movie 12 Angry men (1957) didn’t make a profit, Henry Fonda never received his deferred salary. Despite this setback, he always saw the movie as one of the three best he ever made. The others being The Grapes of Wrath and The Ox-Bow Incident.
LQrVp TIL in 2023, the Iowa Pork Producers Assn. launched an ad campaign featuring the Iowa State College football players Myles Purchase, Tyler Moore, Tommy Hamann, and Caleb Bacon. The four men have their backs to the camera, so their jerseys read: "PURCHASE MOORE HAMANN BACON"
KOZVw TIL in 2001 Crown Prince Dipendra of Nepal shot and killed twelve members of his royal family, including the King and Queen, then shot himself in the head. Dipendra was crowned king while in a coma, then died 3 days later where his cousin, Gyanendra, would take the crown and is still ruling today.
4kg TIL that Tesla said that if you stick a rod far enough into space the temperature difference would create an electrical current and a motor could be run off it and that this (while not doing any work itself) did not violate the second law of thermodynamics.