› added 4 years ago

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TIL of Build the Enterprise, a plan to build a real-life functioning version of the USS Enterprise using today’s technology. It would get to the moon in 3 days or Mars in 3 months, be a kilometer long, fall somewhere between spaceship and space station, and cost $706 billion to build.

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g9j7 TIL Dick Bong is the USs highest air ace, shooting down at least 40 planes during WW II. He actually collided with one plane, claiming a “probable” victory. In 1945, he became a Lockheed test pilot and died in a crash of a P-80 jet fighters on the same day that the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.
b9Ly9 TIL Memorial Day was started by freed slaves to honor soldiers who died during the civil war
6900X TIL that during WWII a German catholic priest was arrested and executed for telling a joke about Hitler
bVmN TIL of UVB-76, a mysterious Russian radio signal that has been transmitting continuously since 1982. Nobody knows who makes the signal, only that it is located near Moscow, makes a buzzing sound 25 times a minute, and every few years will broadcast a string of random names and numbers.
EgkNp TIL about the 2007 South Korea oil spill, one of the worst oil spill in SK, had over a million volunteers joined in on the campaign to clean the disaster in less than 3 months.