The longest U.S. highway is Route 20, which is over 3,365 miles

The U.S. Route 20 (US 20) is an east–west United States highway. The “0″ in its route number indicates that US 20 is a coast-to-coast route. Spanning 3,365 miles (5,415 km), it is the longest road in the United States, and the route roughly parallels that of Interstate 90 (I-90). However, since numbered US routes are not designated as such within the boundaries of national parks, Yellowstone National Park technically splits the route into two sections.

It and US 30 break the general U.S. Route numbering rules in Oregon, since US 30 actually starts north of US 20 and runs parallel to the north throughout the state. The two overlap and continue in the “correct” positioning near Caldwell, Idaho. This is because US 20 was not a planned coast-to-coast route while US 30 was. US 20 originally ended at the eastern entrance of Yellowstone Park; it was extended in 1940.

The highway’s eastern terminus is in Boston, Massachusetts, at Kenmore Square, where it meets Route 2. Its western terminus is in Newport, Oregon, at an intersection with US 101, within a mile of the Pacific Ocean.

All the poop generated on the US Navy's newest aircraft carrier will be vaporized by plasma.

The US Navy is employing Plasma Arc Waste Destruction System (PAWDS) on its latest generation Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carrier. The compact system being used will treat all combustible solid waste generated on board the ship. After having completed factory acceptance testing in Montreal, the system is scheduled to be shipped to the Huntington Ingalls shipyard for installation on the carrier.

Municipal-scale plasma gasification is already used commercially for waste disposal in nine locations with five more projects in development. Sites for gasification facilities are often at landfills where recuperative landfill mining can return the landfills to their original states. Plasma arc gasification is a safe means to destroy both medical and other hazardous waste.

In the Northeast of England in the United Kingdom plasma gasification technology is being implemented within the Northeast of England Process Industry Cluster(NEPIC) on Teesside by Air Products. This company is building two units to gasify societal waste to produce energy with the synthesis gas produced.

There was a post office on the Russian space station Mir. Visiting cosmonauts would use unique postal "markers" to stamp envelopes and other items as having flown aboard the Mir space station

Assembled in orbit from 1986 to 1996, Mir was the first modular space station and had a greater mass than that of any previous spacecraft, holding the record for the largest artificial satellite orbiting the Earth until its deorbit on 21 March 2001 (a record now surpassed by the International Space Station). Mir served as a microgravity research laboratory in which crews conducted experiments in biology, human biology, physics, astronomy, meteorology and spacecraft systems in order to develop technologies required for the permanent occupation of space.
The station was the first consistently inhabited long-term research station in space and was operated by a series of long-duration crews. The Mir programme held the record for the longest uninterrupted human presence in space, at 3,644 days, until 23 October 2010 (when it was surpassed by the ISS), and it currently holds the record for the longest single human spaceflight, of Valeri Polyakov, at 437 days 18 hours. Mir was occupied for a total of twelve and a half years of its fifteen-year lifespan, having the capacity to support a resident crew of three, and larger crews for short-term visits.
Following the success of the Salyut programme, Mir represented the next stage in the Soviet Union’s space station programme. The first module of the station, known as the core module or base block, was launched in 1986, and was followed by six further modules, all launched by Proton rockets (with the exception of the docking module). When complete, the station consisted of seven pressurised modules and several unpressurised components. Power was provided by several photovoltaic arrays mounted directly on the modules. The station was maintained at an orbit between 296 km (184 mi) and 421 km (262 mi) altitude and traveled at an average speed of 27,700 km/h (17,200 mph), completing 15.7 orbits per day.
The station was launched as part of the Soviet Union’s manned spaceflight programme effort to maintain a long-term research outpost in space, and, following the collapse of the USSR, was operated by the new Russian Federal Space Agency (RKA). As a result, the vast majority of the station’s crew were Soviet or Russian; however, through international collaborations, including the Intercosmos, Euromir and Shuttle-Mir programmes, the station was made accessible to astronauts from North America, several European nations and Japan. The cost of the Mir programme was estimated by former RKA General Director Yuri Koptev in 2001 as $4.2 billion over its lifetime (including development, assembly and orbital operation). The station was serviced by Soyuz spacecraft, Progress spacecraft and U.S. space shuttles, and was visited by astronauts and cosmonauts from 12 different nations.

The Angel Falls in Venezuela were named after an American pilot, Jimmy Angel, whose plane got stuck on top of the mountain while searching for gold

The falls, which cascade from the top of Auyantepui in the remote Gran Sabana region of Venezuela, were not known to the outside world until Jimmie Angel flew over them on November 18, 1933 while searching for a valuable ore bed.
On October 9, 1937, Jimmie Angel returned to the falls with the intention of landing. On board his Flamingo monoplane that day were his second wife Marie, Gustavo Heny, and Miguel Delgado, Heny’s gardener.
Jimmie Angel attempted a landing but despite a successful touchdown, his El Rio Caroní aircraft nose-dived when it hit soft ground at the end of its landing run. The wheels sank in the mud making take-off impossible.
The occupants were unharmed but had to trek across difficult terrain and with low food supplies for 11 days to make their way off the tepui and down to the nearest settlement at Kamarata.
When word got out of their exploits, Angel received near-legendary status in Venezuela.
His aircraft remained atop Auyantepui until 1970, when it was disassembled into parts and lifted down by Venezuelan military helicopters. Today an El Rio Caroní can be seen outside the airport terminal at Ciudad Bolívar. The airplane was re-assembled in the city of Maracay’s aviation museum.

An Egyptian special forces unit got confused for terrorists while attempting to storm a hijacked plane, 15 were killed

In 1978, Egyptian Army Special Forces were dispatched to Larnaca International Airport, Larnaca, Cyprus in response to the hijacking of a Cyprus Air passenger aircraft by operatives of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine(PFLP). The operation was organized hastily, and Egyptian authorities failed to notify Cyprus of the arrival of the unit. As the Egyptian commandos approached the plane on the tarmac, they were mistaken by the Cyprus security forces as terrorist reinforcements. Cypriot security forces opened fire on the approaching Egyptian SF members, who were without nearby cover. The firefight cost the lives of 15 members of the 79 members of the Egyptian commando force sent, however there were no reported Cypriot fatalities. The aftermath of the failed incident resulted in the creation of Task Force 777.

Source

Some people steal garden gnomes, take them traveling, and then return the gnome, with photos, back to the owner

The travelling gnome prank is the practice of returning a garden gnome ”to the wild”. It involves stealing a gnome, taking it on a trip, and photographing it at famous landmarks, with the photos being returned to the owner.

There are many clubs and organizations dedicated to the prank. The best-known of these is the Garden Gnome Liberation Front.

The tradition was first recorded in Australia in the 1980s by Phil Tibble. The following blurb appeared in the Regular Shorts feature of the Sydney Morning Herald of September 24, 1986: ‘An Eastern suburbs gnome-owner was distressed when she discovered her gnome had been stolen at the weekend. A note was found in its place: “Dear mum, couldn’t stand the solitude any longer. Gone off to see the world. Don’t be worried, I’ll be back soon. Love Bilbo xxx.”

It was popularized by several films, including the 2001 movie Amélie, where it was featured as a subplot. It appeared as a prank in the 1994 film, Threesome, starring Lara Flynn Boyle, Stephen Baldwin and Josh Charles where a garden gnome is “liberated” and taken on a road trip.

In The Sims 3, the Mysterious Mr. Gnome is a special item that is randomly found in the catacombs, while fishing, when sending ore or gems to their respective refiners, or as an ‘acquisition’ from being promoted in the thief career track. The Mysterious Mr. Gnome is known to travel around the player’s sim’s property (although he is never seen in the act of moving from one place to another), and to do things such as watch TV, float, and do hand stands. If a picture is taken while a Mysterious Mr. Gnome is in the Sim’s inventory, it will appear in the classic “travelling gnome” pose.

In 2004 it was featured in the viral marketing campaign Where is my Gnome? used by online travel agency Travelocity. Since then, the “Roaming Gnome” has become Travelocity’s mascot.

In the 2007 game Half-Life 2: Episode Two, an Achievement requires the player to carry a Garden Gnome throughout almost all of the game and place him into a rocket which in turn would launch him into space. Doing this will unlock the “Little Rocket Man” achievement on both the Xbox 360 and the PC. Another Valve game, Left 4 Dead 2 used the same gnome model for a similar achievement.

In 2008, punk cabaret duo The Dresden Dolls released the song “Night Reconnaissance”. The song is about the lead singer, Amanda Palmer, recalling how she’d steal Garden Gnomes from middle class neighbourhoods as retribution for how she was treated in high school. The Garden Gnomes are then used as actors in a play staged in a barn loft.

Television storylines involving travelling garden gnomes have appeared in soap operas including both Coronation Street (Norris Cole pranking Derek Wilton) and Neighbours (Dr Karl Kennedy pranking Marlene Kratz).

In the 2011 first-person-shooter Battlefield 3, a gnome can be found hidden on several of the multiplayer and singleplayer maps.

Churn Labs, a firm which makes software for mobile devices, has created a game app named Gnonstop Gnomes for Android and iOS. It lets users attach a virtual gnome to travel photographs and use GPS to share the gnome with friends as users travel.

Source

On April 6, 1925, the first in-flight movie was shown. It was a silent film and appeared on a Deutsche Luft Hansa flight

Source

Average number of people airborne over the US any given hour: 61,000

Source

In the Netherlands, there are special traffic lanes for bicycles. There are approximately 17,000 kms of cycle lanes with special bicycle traffic lights.

Source

The MV Lyubov Orlova is a ghost cruise ship, still missing today

Lyubov Orlova ran aground at Deception Island on 27 November 2006. She was towed off by Spanish Navy icebreaker, Las Palmas and made her own way to Ushuaia.

In September 2010, Lyubov Orlova was seized at St John’s, Newfoundland due to debts of US$251,000 owed to the charterer, Cruise North Expeditions, from a cancelled cruise due to faults with the ship. In addition, the 51 crew members had not been paid in five months. She was arrested in Newfoundland, and sold to Neptune International Shipping, in February 2012, to be broken up.

The derelict vessel had been tied up in St. John’s harbour for over two years and was being towed to the Dominican Republic to be scrapped. The tug Charlene Hunt, owned by American tug operator Hunt Marine, was initially contracted to tow the ship south to the Dominican Republic. Just one day after leaving the dock, the tow line parted. The crew of the tugboat tried unsuccessfully to reconnect the line hampered by 35 kilometer per hour winds and three-metre waves. By January 28 2013 Lyubov Orlova was drifting slowly eastward off the southeastern end of the Avalon Peninsula in Canada.

The offshore supply vessel, Atlantic Hawk, with a 157 tonne continuous bollard pull rating, under contract by Husky Energy, was tasked to regain control of the drifting vessel. On February 1, 2013, Transport Canada announced that on January 31 Atlantic Hawkhad successfully gained control of the drifting ship, which was no longer a risk to oil and gas operations in the region.

However, once in international waters, Transport Canada decided to cut her loose. “The Lyubov Orlova no longer poses a threat to the safety of offshore oil installations, their personnel or the marine environment. The vessel has drifted into international waters and given current patterns and predominant winds, it is very unlikely that the vessel will re-enter waters under Canadian jurisdiction,” the department said in a statement. Safety concerns were cited by Transport Canada in their reason to not pursue a salvage operation to retrieve the ship.

The ship was located on February 4 2013, approximately 250 nautical miles east of St. John’s, NL (approximately 50 nautical miles outside Canada’s territorial waters) and drifting in a northeasterly direction. She could have ended up almost anywhere from the Norwegian arctic to western Africa, or stuck in the middle of the North Atlantic Gyre. Transport Canada reiterated that the owner of the vessel remained responsible for its movements, and measures had been taken to monitor the position of the drifting ship.

On February 23, according to the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, Lyubov Orlova was spotted at roughly 1300 nautical miles from the Irish coast.

On February 28 the ship was the subject of news reports in Iceland and Ireland, and a caution to smaller vessels was issued. On March 1st 2013 Irish media reported that a signal from the vessel’s emergency position-indicating radio beacon (EPIRB) was received from 700 nautical miles off the Kerry coast, still in international waters. An EPIRB only starts transmitting when the device is exposed to water, leading experts to speculate that the ship may have sunk. The Irish Air Corps was expected to continue to monitor the region. As of 22 April 2013, there was no trace of the ship.

The highest toll paid by a ship to cross the Panama Canal was by the Crown Princess on May 2, 1993 in the amount of $141,349.97 U.S. funds

Source

In 1936, the first practical helicopter was invented.

It was the German Focke-Wulf Fw 61.

Source

In World War II, the German submarine U-120 was sunk by a malfunctioning toilet

Source

On a ship a toilet is called a head

Source

The only flying saucer launch pad in the world is located in St. Paul, Alberta, Canada

Source

The airplane Buddy Holly died in was the "American Pie." (Thus the name of the Don McLean song.)

Source

Houdini was the first man to fly a plane solo in Australia.

Source

Thomas Edison designed a helicopter that would work with gunpowder. It ended up blowing up and also blew up his factory.

Source

The world's first underground was the London Underground in 1863. It has 275 stations and 253 miles of track.

Source

The Olympic was the sister ship of the Titanic, and she provided twenty-five years of service

Source