› added 4 years ago

136

TIL A future Chief Scientist of the U.S. Air Force decided to become an aviation engineer when as a boy was catching sweets from the American planes during the Berlin Airlift. Dr. Yarymovych worked also for NASA on Apollo program and is credited with initiation of GPS

Read more airspacemag.com

via reddit.com

b85a TIL Jupiter is as big as it can possibly get. If it gained more mass, it would begin to shrink due to higher gravity pulling the gasses in.
VM0Jk TIL Emma Lazarus' sonnet The New Colossus, which says, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" was written for & donated to an auction to raise funds to build the pedestal for the Statue of Liberty. 16 years after her death, a plaque with her words was installed
Lk99Z TIL that in mid-18th century France, eating potatoes was considered cruel and unusual punishment: potatoes were thought of as feed for livestock, and they were believed to cause leprosy in humans. The fear was so widespread that the French passed a law banning them in 1748.
K4O4 TIL kangaroos give birth to an underdeveloped fetus called a joey. When the joey is born it crawls into its mother’s pouch and attaches to a nipple where it grows and develops to a juvenile stage.
9kep TIL that there was an online cult about a lone Phone Booth in the Mojave National Preserve.