› added 5 years ago

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TIL Tom Attridge, the pilot of the first jet aircraft to shoot itself down. He fired two bursts midway through a shallow dive. As the trajectory of the cannon rounds decayed, they ultimately crossed paths with the jet as it continued its descent. Though it was a crash-landing, he survived.

N7QN6 TIL Suzanne Vega's original a capella version of Tom's Dinner was used to tune the MP3 audio format.
D1Yrv TIL Bob Metcalfe, inventor of Ethernet, predicted in a 1995 InfoWorld article that the Internet would "catastrophically collapse" in 1996, and promising to "eat his words" if wrong. In 1997, he put his article in a blender and drank it at the International World Wide Web Conference.
wDEP TIL in 2005 an engineer did a cabin pressure test & forgot to put the system back to auto. 115 passengers & 5 crew later passed out mid-flight through oxygen hypoxia. When 2 F16s made visual contact they saw the last conscious air-steward wave out the window before the plane crashed into a mountain.
WkJEL TIL that the adult mayfly lives less than 24 hours. Its sole purpose is to find partners and mate before it dies. The adults of many mayfly species don't even have mouths and digestive systems, because they don't live long enough to need them.
ZLr4 TIL that Mel Blanc, the iconic voice actor of Bugs Bunny, after being put in a coma for two weeks with no signs of waking up, was finally be revived when a doctor asked him, “How are you feeling today, Bugs Bunny?” After a pause, Mel replied in Bugs Bunny’s voice, “Eh… just fine, Doc”.