› added 3 months ago

19

TIL The US likely would have had explorers on Mars by the 1980s, but Nixon killed every proposal in 1969, slashed the NASA budget after Apollo 12, and stifled space exploration by setting low Earth orbit as the norm

Read more planetary.org

via reddit.com

9Y4vM TIL That in the 80s Nestle tricked African villagers by giving them free baby formula thus causing their bodies to stop producing breast milk in order to sell their product for entire infancy, they even had sales people wear "nurse" coats to advise that formula was safer than their breastmilk.
KY619 TIL most skydiving parachutes have a computer failsafe that will automatically deploy the chute at a preset elevation or time
WkWrd Til in 2016 NASA sent Fungi from Chernobyl in space to study. This fungi eats radiation. The resulting data is yet to be published
RKaw TIL that when a hurricane is expected, Wal-Mart’s top-selling items are strawberry Pop-Tarts and beer.
BgV4b TIL that exactly 800 years ago this Christmas, St. Francis created the first nativity scene, with a manger, hay, ox, ass and carved doll, in the little town of Greccio