› added 7 years ago

57

TIL that modern fire departments/brigades have their origins from when property-insurance companies had their own fire departments.

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bV0N TIL the United States unintentionally landed a probe on Venus. One of the four atmosphere probes of the Pioneer Venus Multiprobe mission made it to the surface intact and transmitted information for over an hour.
4pVw TIL: The scenes in E.T. where E.T. walked awkwardly or fell over was a 12 year old in an E.T. costume who was born without legs and walked on his hands.
vPYA4 TIL that there is a tradition in the U.S. Navy that no submarine is ever lost. Those that go to sea and do not return are considered to be “still on patrol.”
l7vJr TIL of a 1998 marketing campaign by watchmaker Swatch, which divided the day into 1000 "beats" rather than the traditional seconds system. It was called "Swatch Internet Time."
GxOj TIL the only way the BBC could record its live broadcasts in the 1950s was to point a film camera at a television. Because of this, the only known recording of the landmark sci-fi serial “The Quatermass Experiment” features an insect walking across the screen.