› added 8 years ago

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TIL that Boeing plane models are always 7X7 not because of the Lucky number 7 but because the 700 division was in charge of transport aircraft after WWII. They started with 707 and kept the pattern from there.

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awLGN TIL Up until the early 1900s, German used to be the dominant language of international science. "The story of the 20th Century is not so much the rise of English as the serial collapse of German as the up-and-coming language of scientific communication".
PYwOZ TIL the length of a day on Mars has been known (within 3 minutes accuracy) since 1666 but the length of a day on Saturn was a mystery until 2019.
5VXlp TIL Boogers contain salivary mucins, which forms a barrier on your teeth from bacteria that can cause cavities.
ADNXo Of all the bodies in our solar system, the sun is probably the one we want to give the widest berth. It gushes radiation, and even though its surface is the coolest part of the star, it burns at about 9,940°F, hot enough to incinerate just about any material. As such, there are no plans to send a manned mission in its direction anytime soon (Mars is much more interesting, anyway), but it can't hurt to figure out at what distance a person would want to turn back. You can get surprisingly close.
45xb TIL Lagunita Brewing Company has a beer called Undercover Shutdown Ale, which is named as such because after a stakeout of their brewery, no charges were filed because “no one was willing to sell it to them (officers), but everyone was willing to give it to them for free.”