› added 10 years ago

88

TIL that in 1983, the Soviet Union shot down a commercial Korean flight (departing via Anchorage) when it drifted in Russian airspace. As a result, President Reagan declassified a secret U.S. military system to aid international flight tracking. Today this system is known as GPS.

b6Ex0 TIL A french waiter claimed to have invented Crêpes Suzette on accident when he was preparing a dish for future King Edward VII. The story goes that the cordials on a dish of crepes had accidentally caught on fire, but after a taste test he decided the taste had been improved and served it anyways.
Kj14 TIL after getting into a taxi, Prohibition agent Izzy Einstein asked the driver where he could find some alcohol, to which the driver offered him a bottle of whiskey, resulting in an arrest after 35 seconds.
d8vK8 TIL of a 1993 proposal to build a giant advertising billboard in outer space that would appear roughly the same size and brightness as the moon. The project didnt meet funding and inspired a bill to ban all advertisement in outer space.
KOXyB TIL: In Costa Rica, a sea turtle conservation organization is exposing sea turtle egg poachers by placing fake sea turtle eggs on the beach, with GPS trackers imbedded inside the eggs to reveal the location of whoever takes them.
kM8B TIL that the PM of Pakistan could be toppled because a document allegedly proving his innocence of corruption was written in Calibri font. Calibri was not made publicly available to the public by Microsoft until a year after the alleged creation of the document.