› added 5 years ago

162

TIL in 1945, a school dropout and self-taught electrical engineer named Percy Spencer was working at Ratheon. He stepped in front of a magnetron, a device that powers radars. He noticed a chocolate bar in his pocket had melted. Later that year, he filed a patent for the first microwave oven.

Read more newenglandhistoricalsociety.com

via reddit.com

6ExO7 TIL in 1995, a Russian Ilyushin Il-76 was intercepted and captured by the Taliban. After negotiations for a prisoner exchange fell through, the Russian crew physically overpowered and disarmed their guards and started their plane, narrowly dodging a firetruck as they took off towards freedom.
v1JPK TIL that in 1995 we sent a probe in Jupiter's atmosphere. It gathered and relayed data for 58 minutes, before being destroyed by the increasing pressure.
E1LQW TIL about the League of Militant Atheists, an atheistic and antireligious organization of workers and intelligentsia that developed in Soviet Russia. The League aimed at exterminating religion in all its manifestations and forming an anti-religious scientific mindset among the workers.
P6eJ TIL snake venom contains proteins that change the odor of the wounded animal, allowing snakes to track their bitten prey by odor. This adaptation allowed rattlesnakes to evolve the strike-and-release bite mechanism, which provided a huge benefit by minimizing contact with potentially dangerous prey.
gbd8 TIL That the Germans invented and used minature remote controlled tanks for bomb/building clearing in WW2.