› added 3 years ago

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TIL about project Orion, a project to develop a spaceship propelled by nuclear explosions. The project was abandoned due to a treaty that forbid nuclear weapon tests in the atmosphere, in outer space and under water.

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epEKk TIL: Initially, The Beatles included Ghandi on the cover of Sgt Peppers, but an EMI exec airbrushed him out behind a palm leaf - likely to sell more records in India
Zp8e4 TIL Timothy Olyphant was originally offered the role of Dominic Toretto in The Fast and The Furious. Olyphant passed thinking the movie would bomb at the box office and the role was given to Vin Diesel.
wLXBY An almost sci-fi study published in Physical Review Letters by UC Berkeley postdoctoral fellow Peter Hintz and colleagues could mean that there are black holes out there that would be more like portals than gaping mouths of destruction — if you didn’t mind your entire past being erased and entering into infinite futures.
xYLB TIL that a Spanish woman claimed ownership of the Sun in 2010, using a loophole in the Space Treaty of 1967. Spanish courts validated her claim and she proceeded to charge companies that use solar energy. In 2015 she sued ebay after her account was blocked for selling plots of land on the Sun.
vKJr TIL that the U.S. is ranked 32 out of 179 countries according to the level of freedom of media and press.