› added 7 months ago

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Today I learned about the Girardoni air rifle; a rifle developed in 1779 that was capable of effectively shooting up to 125 meters with a muzzle velocity of 600 fps, it had a 20 round magazine and an internal air reservoir that was good for up to 30 shots before needing to be refilled.

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v5lx TIL Benjamin Guggenheim, heir to mining magnate Meyer Guggenheim, dressed in his finest suit, had a glass of brandy and smoked a cigar as the Titanic sank. “Tell [my wife] I played the game out straight to the end. No woman shall be left aboard this ship because Ben Guggenheim was a coward.”
DQ4eY TIL The mathematician William Playfair (noted for inventing the line, area, bar, and pie charts) was also a spy. The Scottish Playfair counterfeited and distributed false assignats which drove down their value and put France into an economic crisis by 1795.
kEj4 TIL Atari didn’t allow designers to receive credit on their games, and so Warren Robinett placed a secret object in the game which allowed the players to see a hidden screen displaying “Created by Warren Robinett”, one of the earliest Easter eggs to be created
jJwa TIL Jesse Owens never received a congratulations telegram for winning the 1936 Olympics from President Roosevelt, but received something from Hitler
KYXDR TIL sound travels at 343 m/s in air, 1,481 m/s in water (almost 4.3 times as fast) and at 5,120 m/s in iron (almost 15 times as fast) and in diamond sound travels at 12,000 metres per second (39,000 ft/s),[2]— about 35 times its speed in air because of how exceptionally stiff diamond is.