› added 1 year ago

57

TIL about the "catapult-able cockpit", created by Romanian inventor Anastase Dragomir and successfully tested in 1929 at the Paris-Orly Airport, which featured a parachuted chair that was ejected from an aircraft. It was the first modern layout for an ejection seat, later perfected during WWII.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

OGVeg TIL the Air Force operates a secret airline to transport employees to places like Area 51.
awjxJ TIL that the world's largest cemetery is Wadi-us-Salaam ("Valley of Peace") in Najaf, Iraq - it contains tens of millions of bodies over an area of 6 km², and approximately 500,000 new bodies from around the globe are buried there annually
N7yWe TIL all the oceans' waters travel on a "global conveyor belt" called thermohaline circulation--and the journey once around the planet takes about 1000 years.
X0V66 TIL the most expensive street in Australia - Wolsley Road, Point Piper (Sydney), has a MEDIAN home value of $24 million.
b6ZL9 TIL about the world's rarest bird that was thought to be extinct for nearly 80 years until it was rediscovered in 2013. Only 3 individuals of the species are known to exist in the wild.