› added 4 years ago

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TIL The idea for "Bunker busting" bombs (bombs designed to explode shortly after hitting a target -- penetrating, then exploding) came from a Disney cartoon made during WWII. Once made, they were nicknamed "Disney Bombs."

xVVGk Of all the bodies in our solar system, the sun is probably the one we want to give the widest berth. It gushes radiation, and even though its surface is the coolest part of the star, it burns at about 9,940°F, hot enough to incinerate just about any material. As such, there are no plans to send a manned mission in its direction anytime soon (Mars is much more interesting, anyway), but it can't hurt to figure out at what distance a person would want to turn back. You can get surprisingly close. The sun is about 93 million miles away from Earth, and if we think of that distance as a football field, a person starting at one end zone could get about 95 yards before burning up.
W7vbL TIL that the small town of Wallace, ID (pop. 971) is actually the center of the universe
VBLMQ TIL Gangkhar Puensum; the tallest unclimbed mountain in the world, will likely never be climbed due to a ban on mountaineering in Bhutan 🇧🇹
LQjmV TIL that Galileo’s telescope wasn’t strong enough to tell what Saturn’s rings were, so he thought it was a larger central planet closely flanked by two smaller ones. He described the rings as Saturn’s “ears.”
16nyr TIL about the death of Poltergeist actress Dominique Dunne. She was strangled into a coma by her ex-boyfriend and passed away 5 days later. He was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and served just three and a half years in prison.