I learned that the flight controls on a big airliner are made of plywood.
Also alien ships have the same round slide rules hanging on their walls as we have our planes, or maybe the aliens stole it from the plane? Crafty, they are so much smarter than us....
And police cars in the 50's had retractable sirens and lights, they could be there one second and gone the next.
But I haven't learned why small alien ships have metal walls and big alien motherships have curtain walls, I guess it's because we are stupid, stupid, stupid....