› added 1 year ago

53

TIL that the prestige in holding the Blue Riband for the highest average speed in crossing the Atlantic, was such that the British government gave the shipping firm Cunard a £2.5 million loan to help take the title back from Germany, which Cunard did.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

R7Nma TIL there were once giant beavers called "castoroides", weighing up to 125 kg (276 lb) and measuring up to 2.2 m (7.2 ft) long, with 15 cm (6 in) long incisors.
GAYyG TIL NASA estimates that Voyager 1 will have enough power to continue communicating until 2025, 48 years after its launch. Its fuel for running the communications equipment, plutonium-238 dioxide, will have decayed too much to generate the required heat to keep them operating.
v9X4 TIL Julius Caesar, despite being the most famous Roman, only ruled as a dictator for four years before being assassinated.
j6K0X TIL that Eagles can see rabbits from two miles away as a distinct object, not just a blurry dot thanks to their large eyes that can take up more than 50% of their head and their retina with 5x more cells compared to humans.
5VQ9p TIL the Higgs-Boson Particle, aka "the God Particle", was actually called "the Goddamn Particle" by physicists because it was so difficult to detect. Publishers forced the rename, resulting in a confusing tie to religion for the particle which is nearly universally hated by physicists.