› added 5 months ago

54

TIL a Challenger space shuttle engineer, Allan McDonald, raised safety concerns against the wishes of his employer & NASA. He was ignored; a fatal accident resulted. When McDonald spoke out, he was demoted by his company. Congress stepped in to help him. He later taught ethical decision making.

Read more npr.org

via reddit.com

9YljM TIL a Texas sheriff was duped into buying money copying box. Irate that the box did not work, he confronted the seller, who convinced the sheriff he had been operating it incorrectly and gave him some money for the trouble. The sheriff was later arrested because the money he had been given was fake.
QNrPL TIL that although the location of the former base of MI6 from 1964 to 1994 was meant to be classified, The Daily Telegraph called it "London's worst-kept secret, known only to every taxi driver, tourist guide and KGB agent".
1YyD TIL that there’s a cult in the small island nation of Vanuatu, called that Prince Phillip Movement, that believes that Prince Phillip is a divine being. He once sent a signed picture of himself to them and they sent him a pig killing club.
lorYA TIL NASA officially banned consuming Alcohol in space in 1972 after sherry was proposed for Skylab meals, but it never really went away. “NASA will tell you there is no alcohol aboard the ISS” says astronaut Clayton Anderson. “As a person who lived there for five months, I’ll tell you that’s bogus."
xXw7 TIL The “magic number” of people needed to create a viable population for multi-generational space travel has been calculated to about the size of a small village - 160.