› added 5 years ago

208

TIL: the first pilots crossing the Atlantic, crash landed on bogland in the western tip of Ireland. During their flight they came into free fall twice above the ocean. They lost the hood of the ‘cockpit’ and went trough snow and rain at 3500 m altitude, soaking and freezing them completely.

Read more connemara.net

via reddit.com

Lk9lp TIL that while peacock mantis shrimp can see light ranging from deep UV to far IR (300-720nm), they can only discriminate wavelengths that are more than 25nm apart, the difference that separates orange and yellow, with humans being able to discriminate wavelengths that are only 1-4mm apart
pjAe TIL in 1963, at the height of the Cold War, the US military launched a ring of 480million needles into orbit around the earth. It was hoped they would more reliably bounce radio signals back to earth in case the Soviets cut through undersea cables. Multiple clumps of these needles are still up there
kJ8oE TIL there's a non-working phone booth in Japan, created by a gardener to help deal with the death of his cousin. It was opened to the public after the 2011 tsunami and has since received over 30,000 visitors who come to have a one way conversation with their loved ones.
JYVg1 TIL Due to Galileo's training in Renaissance art and an understanding of chiaroscuro (a technique for shading light and dark) he quickly understood that the moon shadows he was seeing were actually mountains and craters. From his sketches, he made estimates of their heights and depths
KYoaR TIL As part of a promotional campaign by Sega in the early 2000s, Fred Durst signed several Dreamcast consoles and battled other players in a UFC game. The campaign featured a magazine ad with a cartoon Fred Durst saying, "If you get your ass kicked, it's probably me on the other end of the line."