› added 5 years ago

133

TIL in 1942 the BBC issued an appeal for postcards and photographs of the coast of Europe from Norway to the Pyrenees. It was actually an intelligence gathering exercise, they were sent to the War Office to help determine a suitable location (Normandy) for the eventual D-Day landings of 1944.

Read more bbc.co.uk

via reddit.com

Z8oMG TIL that the Fosbury Flop is so successful as a high jump technique because it allows the jumper’s centre of mass to travel underneath the bar
J9Gm TIL in 2012, then 17 year old, Stacey Irvine, was rushed to the hospital with difficulty breathing, anemia, and severe vitamin deficiencies. This was caused by her diet of only chicken nuggets and French fries.
E1QJo TIL That in the Live Aid Queen performance, at 16:38 you can see a wave going to the back of the stadium from the people clapping. That wave is the speed of sound, caused by the people at the back hearing the music a split second before the people at the front.
Opwe TIL: In case of a threat, Switzerland has over 3000 demolition points where bridges can be demolished remotely and landslides can cause certain roads to be blocked off.
v1nPL TIL that origami as we know it today was due to Akira Yoshizawa who, in his own estimation created more than 50,000 models of which only a few hundred were presented as diagrams in his 18 books; he lived in poverty from 1937 until 1954, when he published his first monograph and got his first exhibit