› added 10 years ago

75

TIL that when KAL007 was shot down, it was one of the most important single events that prompted the Reagan Administration to allow worldwide access to the United States military’s GNSS system, which was classified at the time. Today this system is widely known as GPS

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

x6787 TIL that it took Boeing less than 3 years from starting the 747 project to first flight. The first commercial flight occurred 11 months later.
N7K9e TIL that the Orlov diamond was stolen from the Srirangam temple in India by a French soldier, who sold it to a merchant who smuggled it to Amsterdam, from where it was bought by Count Grigory Orlov, who gifted it to Catherine the Great. She encrusted the diamond into the Imperial Sceptre in 1774.
5yxk TIL In 2008 a Japanese man noticed his food going missing, so he set up a webcam and found that a woman had been living in his closet for a year.
wLpoJ TIL that CBS crime drama "Cold Case" takes place in the same fictional universe as the CSI franchise and "Without a Trace".
jLlv TIL: The Back to the Future DeLorean and the Star Trek Enterprise were designed by the same man