› added 5 years ago

81

TIL Transatlantic aviators refer to the longitude of 30W as the Molson-Guinness Line because that is where aircraft move from the Irish to the Canadian air traffic system and vice versa, Molson being a Canadian beer and Guinness being an Irish one. It is even marked on charts.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

mWgy TIL Christopher Lee (91), who played Saruman, Count Dooku, etc. is a descendant of the First Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne. He is a heavy metal singer and recorded a full solo album (2010). He killed Nazis in the British special forces, and even witnessed the last guillotine execution in France
yRpM TIL engineers building a bridge between Germany and Switzerland found that when the two halves met their elevations differed by 54 cm. Germany bases sea level on the North Sea, and Switzerland by the Mediterranean; someone messed up the correction, doubling it instead of cancelling it out.
r7Wd TIL that the International Space Station is the most expensive object ever built at $160 Billion.
49o TIL that the inventor of the Super Soaker reinvested most of his earnings from the toy into energy technology research.
k511 TIL that prior to creating The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams appeared in two Monty Python sketches, the first being episode 42.