What did you learn today TIL

[IdleBoast]

Now, I want to look that hup.  HTF do you capture a Flying Fortress?

I'd guess after an emergency landing from a mechanical failure or a fuel leak.

1: That's an Autogyro, and 2: Sikorski was a pinko.

Nope, that's a helicopter (no thrust impeller, and that appears to be a pair of contra-rotating rotors.

Sikorsky made helicopters practical, but they'd been flying for over 40 years before that.

(The first helicopter was German, but not Nazi - it was 1901. Autogyros didn't come along until the 1920s.)

[psiberzerker]

Nope, that's a helicopter (no thrust impeller, and that appears to be a pair of contra-rotating rotors.

Flettner "Kolibri."  You're right.  I mistook it for another model, they made for towing behind uBooten.  (Focke-Achgelis Fa 330)

I ficken <3 experimental aricraft from WWII, and sie Germans had some of the whackiest ideas.

[IdleBoast]

Start searching, and you'll find that both sides started letting the boffins' imaginations run loose by the end of the war - who in their right mind tries to clear mines with a Catherine wheel twenty feet across?

[psiberzerker]

Start searching, and you'll find that both sides started letting the boffins' imaginations run loose by the end of the war - who in their right mind tries to clear mines with a Catherine wheel twenty feet across?

Yeah, I've been pretty voraciously devowering this kinda stuff for decades.  Don't get me started on Tesla, yeah he was a genius, but he was also quite mad.  His idea for wireless energy was to ionize the entire atmosphere, because what could possibly go wrong?

[ChirpingGirl]

Now, I want to look that hup.  HTF do you capture a Flying Fortress?

I'd guess after an emergency landing from a mechanical failure or a fuel leak.

1: That's an Autogyro, and 2: Sikorski was a pinko.

Nope, that's a helicopter (no thrust impeller, and that appears to be a pair of contra-rotating rotors.

Sikorsky made helicopters practical, but they'd been flying for over 40 years before that.

(The first helicopter was German, but not Nazi - it was 1901. Autogyros didn't come along until the 1920s.)

German... Nazi... what was really the difference back then?  

On September 14, 1939, the VS-300, the world's first practical helicopter, took flight at Stratford, Connecticut. Designed by Igor Sikorsky and built by the Vought-Sikorsky Aircraft Division of the United Aircraft Corporation, the helicopter was the first to incorporate a single main rotor and tail rotor design.

Looking into it, it's pretty complicated after all. But where I read it, it said they pretty much did.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64fgG2CnHn0

[psiberzerker]

the world's first practical helicopter,

Meaning capable of controlled untethered flight.  Yes.  They experimented with other stuff that could get off the ground, but either indoors, or tethered so it didn't get away.  Prototypes, but the Sikorsky design is what made Helicopters useful, and that's why we use his design to this very day.  I'll put forth the development hell that was the Osprey (Rotor Tip Vortices interacting with each other over the wing)  

Sikorsky invented the helicopter.  (Okay, he did it for US, but we had the money to throw at the project.)  We don't use tail sitters, or rocket gliders either, even though many people experimented with them on both sides.

[ChirpingGirl]

I learned you can post to Instagram from chrome on a computer. 

Grandma is so getting bombed with old pics. 

[oldguymem]

I learned there are some like minded people here and I am happy to be a small part of this. Love the pictures/vids and great stories!

Thank you one and all!

[_priapism]

Butter your pie crust snakes.

[JBRG]

I learned that what makes quartz into amethyst is the inclusion of iron when the crystals are forming. Much like the inclusion of chromium in corundum turns it into a ruby.

[wayne3218]

Things you learn on this thread change what you have always thought for years.

https://primeindustriesusa.com/history-of-the-helicopter/

Helicopters That Preceded Sikorsky’s

Paul Cornu, A French engineer designed and built a helicopter and managed to get it to lift off in 1907 – officially making it the world’s first piloted helicopter. It featured two rotor blades that rotated in opposite directions so that the torque would be canceled. Powered by a 24 horsepower engine, it had to be held in position by men on the ground and wasn’t at all maneuverable, so all in all it wasn’t a great success.

History of the Helicopter from Concept to Modern Day

While Igor Sikorsky is undoubtedly the father of the modern helicopter (Check out our infographic on the First Flying Helicopter!), the history of the helicopter is said by many to have started with an ingenious drawing by 15th century painter and inventor, Leonardo da Vinci. Called the ornithopter flying machine, da Vinci’s 1488 design was never built, but it is said to have inspired modern day helicopters, and there is a suggestion that it inspired Sikorsky.

[ChirpingGirl]

Hitler had a meager final meal of pasta and tomato sauce. And treated his personal chef Constanze Manziarly like shit and made her bake cakes constantly.

Notes from personal chef Constanze Manziarly to her sister show the pathetic plate was the evil dictator’s last.

He killed himself between courses — as she prepared a main course of fried eggs and mashed potatoes, not knowing he was already dead.

Two days after Hitler’s death, Manziarly was seen being captured by two soldiers from Russia’s Red Army and she was never seen again.

CJ has an obsession with WW2. 

[RopeFiend]

Continuing my interviews with the people at work, I discovered a curious fact:

There is *no* Nepali word or concept for THIS:

They flat don't EVER happen in that country. 

Oh, the kids are briefly told about them in school, but that's something that happens in remote parts of the world (to them), so they don't understand how freaking DEADLY they can be, when you're IN one of those "remote parts of the world" like Dallas.  Trying to explain to them what they need to do in an emergency draws a total blank on most of them.  A couple vaguely understood the concept, but didn't know the English word for it, and didn't know that they needed to follow the OTHER people that might be running for their lives to a shelter area.  None of them could tell me where the shelters were, even though there's a standard sign above all of the doors to those areas.

Folks, IF YOU SEE ME RUNNING, TRY TO KEEP UP!!!  If I'm yelling, you'd better MOVE FAST.  I'm one of the most laid-back people at work until a dire emergency happens, and then I go from mild-mannered Bruce Banner to the Incredible Hulk in seconds.

[Jed_]

How often do you interview the Nepalese?  In London I found a Nepalese restaurant, and had to eat there for the novelty of it.  I had mutton.

In Maryland we don’t really have tornadoes.  I tried to remember that when I was leaving College Park Maryland many years ago just to see an F4 (it tossed a car with two sisters in it over a 3 story building killing them).  And a tiny tornado just tore through my town a mere couple weeks ago tearing the roof off the store where I used to buy my clothes.

Maryland doesn’t have earthquakes either, except a decade ago I thought ‘What the fuck are they doing on the roof of my work’ until I realized I just experienced my first earthquake.

[watcher1]

According to those in the know, all 7.5 billion people now living in the entire world can fit standing in the state of Texas. They figured that the 7.5 billion people would take up about 255,000 square miles.  The square mileage of Texas is 268,820 sq miles. Room to spare.

[MintJulie]

According to those in the know, all 7.5 billion people now living in the entire world can fit standing in the state of Texas. They figured that the 7.5 billion people would take up about 255,000 square miles.  The square mileage of Texas is 268,820 sq miles. Room to spare.

WOW, that's a lot of people.

The US should hit 328,000,000 shortly
http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/us-population/

[IdleBoast]

If you took all the electrons carrying all the information on the entire internet, they would weigh about as much as an apple.

Biblical man "fell" when they ate an apple from the tree of knowledge.

Now all our knowledge weighs the same as that fruit...

[Jed_]

According to those in the know, all 7.5 billion people now living in the entire world can fit standing in the state of Texas. They figured that the 7.5 billion people would take up about 255,000 square miles.  The square mileage of Texas is 268,820 sq miles. Room to spare.

Packed in like on a subway car the size of Texas.  Imagine all the illicit groping going on?

[staci]

CJ doesn't live in Texas.

[psiberzerker]

If you took all the electrons carrying all the information on the entire internet, they would weigh about as much as an apple.

Biblical man "fell" when they ate an apple from the tree of knowledge.

Now all our knowledge weighs the same as that fruit...

Also, mythically Newton got the idea to study Gravity by being hit in the head by an apple.  The true story is shrouded in mystery, but I remember a quote about him watching an apple fall, before he started his experiments, dropping objects together.

Apparently, not far from the tree.