Boeing 747s facts

While investigating facts about Boeing 747s, I found out little known, but curios details like:

About the Tenerife Airport Disaster when, on a day in which there was fog heavy enough to reduce visibility to less than 500 yards, two Boeing 747s had a head-on collision at the runway that resulted in 583 casualties and the deadliest accident in aviation history.

The deadliest (583 casualties) crash in Aviation history occurred not in the skies but on the runway between two Boeing 747s on March 27, 1977. Known as the 'Tenerife Airport Disaster'.

In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across. Here are 11 of the best facts about Boeing 747s I managed to collect.

1. The Boeing 747 flies quieter due to naturally selected edges of their engines. When most planes fly, turbulence from air gushing over their engines creates noise. However, 747s have their engines serrated like a comb, which divides turbulence into tiny currents aka micro-turbulences.

2. The mouth of the biggest trawling net in the world is big enough to accommodate 13 Boeing 747s.

3. The first 550 Boeing 747s each contained 400-1500kg of depleted uranium as trim weight

4. The largest chamber room in the world is Sarawak Chamber, located in Gua Nasib Bagus. This chamber room is 230 feet high, 2,300 feet long, and 1,299 feet wide. To put this into perspective - the chamber could hold 40 Boeing 747s without overlapping them.

5. Mobutu Sese Seko, Zaire's longtime dictator, would charter a Concorde jet or Boeing 747s for trips for himself and his family to places such as Paris or Disneyland. He also converted a northern village into a white marble retreat nicknamed the "Versailles of the Jungle".

6. The 747 got its hump because Boeing thought it would be a terrible passenger jet. They believed the 747s future was as a cargo jet & adding the hump made it possible to load cargo nose-first. The hump has since made the 747 an icon, and its now carried more passengers than any other widebody jet

7. The Boeing 747 that made the first commercial flight was also the first 747 to be hijacked by terrorists AND ended its career when it was one of the two 747s in aviation history's most deadly accident.

8. Early Boeing 747s had a sextant port in the cockpit which was later replaced with the advance of inertial navigation.

9. The Hindenburg blimp is the largest airship ever built. They were 245 m (804 ft) long, longer than three Boeing 747s placed end-to-end