› added 5 years ago

73

TIL that by international agreement, a meter is defined as the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of ​1⁄299792458 second.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

gJPL TIL that a successful attempt at breaking the altitude record for a helicopter resulted in an engine failure which led to a world record for the longest autorotation of a helicopter.
R5KN1 TIL spending money on charity may make you happier than spending money on yourself if your basic needs are already met
wGgM TIL the chains that you can see hanging under school buses and trucks are there to provide traction in snow. With the flip of a switch, the chains will lower automatically and the centrifugal force sends the chains into action. [Video]
PYGxJ TIL that Islam is younger than Christianity.
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.