› added 6 years ago

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TIL that Turkey Vultures have been & sometimes are still used to detect natural gas leaks from pipelines; the odor that gas companies add to gas (so we can detect it since it's odorless) is the same as rotting flesh, which leads the vultures to congregate in the sky in the area of the leak.

gMoJb TIL the first hostile aerial bombardment on U.S. soil happened in 1921 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, when white police forces took to the air to drop incendiary bombs and dynamite on the business district in the black neighborhood of Greenwood, known at the time as the "Black Wall Street."
9wpdB TIL that the white flames shooting from the exhaust of top fuel dragsters is not from unburned fuel but is because the exhaust is so incredibly hot it breaks down the water vapor in the intake air to hydrogen and oxygen which makes the white exhaust flames.
LQ6vQ TIL in 1972 a note left in a locker at JFK Airport demanded payment or bombs would go off on 4 TWA planes leaving that day. Police found one bomb but cleared the other TWA flights. The next day a bomb exploded on a TWA plane at McCarran Airport in Vegas - it was one of the planes cleared to leave NY
neV7 TIL on September 6, 1949, a mentally disturbed WWII vet killed 13 of his neighbors and injured 3 more in what is considered the first single-episode mass murder in US history. When he died in 2009, his last words were “I’d have killed a thousand if I had enough bullets.”
MD9W TIL A single MDMA experience might permanently increase sociability and empathy in adults with autism