› added 9 years ago

99

TIL in 1985 an F-15 fighter jet successfully shot down a satellite with a missile; by 1998, there were still 8 trackable pieces in orbit

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VQpZ TIL that on an 8x8 chessboard, there are 26,534,728,821,064 ways for a knight to visit every square once and end up back at the square it started from.
Yoxv TIL that Jeff on The Fresh Prince of Bel Air always wore the same outfit every time he would be thrown out of the front of the Banks’ house. This was so they could film the scene once and not risk Jeff getting hurt.
J1w48 TIL that corpses can grow vivianite crystals in the right conditions
8alaZ TIL Forced Rhubarb, grown by candlelight in otherwise pitch-black sheds, grows so quickly you can actually hear it make sound - popping, cracking and snapping (audio in comments).
78Zdx TIL the Canfranc Railway Station linking France with Spain was the second largest station in Europe at 240 meters in length when completed in 1928. It was a hub for trafficking of spies, refugees (including artists Ernst and Chagal), and more than 100 tons of gold during WW2.