title
stringlengths 2
302
| label
stringlengths 3
20
|
|---|---|
"TIL: Laurence Tureaud named himself professionally as Mr. T because he hated how his father, uncle, and brother who returned from Vietnam, were disrespectfully called "boy" by whites. He wanted the first word from everybody's mouth to be "Mister" when speaking to him." | todayilearned |
"TIL in 1980 the FBI formed a fake company and attempted to bribe members of congress. Nearly 25% of those tested accepted the bribe, and were convicted" | todayilearned |
"TIL that when filming the TV series "The Mandalorian" in 2019, the crew ran out of Stormtrooper costumes, so they reached out to the local branch of a Star Wars fan organisation, whose members came to join the filming in their own home-made Stormtrooper costumes" | todayilearned |
"TIL when Mr Rogers heard his limo driver was going to be waiting outside while Rogers was in a meeting, he asked the driver to come in. On the way back they passed the driver's home and Rogers asked if they could stop and meet his family. Rogers kept in touch with the driver for the rest of his life" | todayilearned |
"TIL Six Georgia inmates out on work detail saved a Deputy Sheriff who collapsed unconscious. They could have taken his gun & fled with the work van but used the Deputy's phone to call 911. The Sheriff's Office gave the men a pizza party with homemade dessert & recommended reduced sentences." | todayilearned |
"TIL an FBI whistleblower reported multiple problems in forensic cases. After years of the FBI seeking to ruin him, his claims were investigated and a report showed that forensic hair analysis was flawed or inaccurate over 90% of the time." | todayilearned |
"TIL in 2011, a 29-year-old Australian bartender found an ATM glitch that allowed him to withdraw way beyond his balance. In a bender that lasted four-and-half months, he managed to spend around $1.6 million of the bank’s money." | todayilearned |
"TIL a Georgia teacher who bought a $400 travel insurance policy was rewarded $10,000 because she read the fine print of the contract. After reading to page 7, she saw a “Pays to Read” bit that said the first to email and mention the fine print contest would win 10K." | todayilearned |
"TIL planned obsolescence is illegal in France; it is a crime to intentionally shorten the lifespan of a product with the aim of making customers replace it. In early 2018, French authorities used this law to investigate reports that Apple deliberately slowed down older iPhones via software updates." | todayilearned |
"TIL Frank Sinatra died the night of Seinfeld's finale and his ambulance made it to the hospital in record time because traffic was so light due to everyone watching the show." | todayilearned |
"TIL : IN 2006, a man in Portland, Oregon hired a hitman to kill his 51-year-old wife. His wife ended up killing the hitman with her bare hands. When Susan Kuhnhausen had her hands on his neck she asked him, "TELL ME WHO SENT YOU HERE AND I WILL CALL YOU A FUCKING AMBULANCE!"" | todayilearned |
"TIL a very frugal librarian, the late Robert Morin, left millions of his life savings to the University of New Hampshire where he worked as a librarian, then the University spent $1 million dollars of that money on a scoreboard for a new football stadium." | todayilearned |
"TIL That while filming Tokyo Drift, they couldn't get a permit to film a scene. They filmed it anyway, and the studio hired a fall guy to claim to be the director and spend a night in jail." | todayilearned |
"TIL Playboy ran a story that depicted a future where homosexuality was the norm, heterosexuality was outlawed and anti-straight mobs marched the streets. Outraged letters poured in. He responded “If it was wrong to persecute heterosexuals in a homosexual society, then the reverse was wrong, too.”" | todayilearned |
"TIL that Eminem watched his daughter, Hailie, get crowned homecoming queen from an empty classroom in the school because he didn't want to take the attention away from her." | todayilearned |
"TIL when Rockstar first released Grand Theft Auto, they actually paid reviewers to negatively review the game in order to keep it controversial, and therefore popular. They targeted right wing news papers to ensure moral outrage and drive the game to success." | todayilearned |
"TIL when Nintendo had a fall in revenue from the less successful Wii U its CEO cut his pay in half for 5 months rather than blame workers" | todayilearned |
"TIL Judith Love Cohen, who helped create the Abort-Guidance System which rescued the Apollo 13 astronauts, went to work on the day she was in labor. She took a printout of a problem she was working on to the hospital. She called her boss and said she finished the problem and gave birth to Jack Black" | todayilearned |
"TIL United Airlines had assured a blind woman that they would help her off the plane but only after the other passengers had gotten off, before forgetting about her and locking the plane up with her in it after everybody else had left." | todayilearned |
"TIL about Marion Stokes, a Philadelphia woman who began taping whatever was on television in 1979 and didn't stop until her death in 2012.. The 71,000 VHS and Betamax tapes she made are the most complete collection preserving this era of TV. They are being digitized by the Internet Archive." | todayilearned |
"TIL a New Jersey man bought a $5 bottle of orange juice from Shoprite; his wife said it was too expensive and sent him back to return it, because it was on sale for $2.50 elsewhere. He then decided to buy 2 lottery tickets with the cash refunded from the OJ; he won $315.3 million." | todayilearned |
"TIL Carrie Fisher told her fans: "No matter how I go, I want it reported that I drowned in moonlight, strangled by my own bra.”" | todayilearned |
"TIL Shia LaBeouf came under heavy fire for plagiarizing his directorial debut in 2012. When he publicly apologized to the original artist, Dan Clowes, people discovered that Shia's apology was itself plagiarized verbatim off a Yahoo Answers post from 2010." | todayilearned |
"TIL that Javier Bardem's performance as Anton Chigurh in 'No Country for Old Men' was named the 'Most Realistic Depiction of a Psychopath' by an independent group of psychologists in the 'Journal of Forensic Sciences'." | todayilearned |
"TIL 29-yr-old Marine veteran Taylor Winston stole a truck to drive victims of the Las Vegas shooting to the hospital. He and his girlfriend made 2 trips having to pick only the most critically injured 10 - 15 people each time after helping boost others over a fence away from the shooter." | todayilearned |
"TIL an 86-year-old wrote an upbeat review for her local paper about a new Olive Garden. She was mercilessly mocked by the Internet. Anthony Bourdain thought she had a valuable POV on small town dining. So he published a book of her reviews." | todayilearned |
"TIL Garden Veggie Straws, which shows fresh vegetables on the bag, and are promoted as a healthy alternative to chips, are actually made of salt, starch, and tomato paste. They have less nutrition than actual potato chips and the manufacturer, which has a history of false claims, is now being sued." | todayilearned |
"TIL a Harvard study found that hiring one highly productive ‘toxic worker’ does more damage to a company’s bottom line than employing several less productive, but more cooperative, workers." | todayilearned |
"TIL that Jimmy Carter is the longest-lived president, the longest-retired president, the first president to live forty years after their inauguration, and the first to reach the age of 95." | todayilearned |
"TIL that Persian King Agha Mohammad Khan ordered the execution of two servants for being too loud. Since it was a holy day, he postponed their execution by a day and made the servants return to their duties. They murdered the king in his sleep that night." | todayilearned |
"TIL that in 1998 Sony had the chance to buy the rights to almost every Marvel character for 25 million. They opted to only buy the rights to Spider-Man for just 7 million, stating, "Nobody gives a shit about the other Marvel characters."" | todayilearned |
"TIL that the F.B.I. and C.I.A. recruit heavily from the Mormon population because they are usually cheaper to do a security clearance on, they often speak another language from their mission trips and they usually have a low risk lifestyle." | todayilearned |
"TIL Rome has major struggles with expanding the subway system in the city because diggers keep running into major archaeological finds. The Metro C expansion has been in the works for the past 40 years and has unearthed Hadrian's Athenaeum, a military complex, and an amphitheater ." | todayilearned |
"TIL apes don't ask questions. While apes can learn sign language and communicate using it, they have never attempted to learn new knowledge by asking humans or other apes. They don't seem to realize that other entities can know things they don't. It's a concept that separates mankind from apes." | todayilearned |
"TIL The ashes of Stephen Hawking were buried between the graves of Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin, in a section of Westminster Abbey known as the "Scientists Corner." As a final tribute, during the burial, the European Space Agency beamed recordings of Hawking's voice to the nearest black hole." | todayilearned |
"TIL That in 2007, Rockstar Games allowed fans to call a number and rant about what they thought was wrong with America. The best calls were featured on a radio station in "Grand Theft Auto IV"" | todayilearned |
"TIL that in the 1950's, donut shops were some of the first food businesses commonly open late at night. They became hot spots for police working the night shift since it gave them a place to grab a snack, fill out paper work, or even just take a break. This is why donuts became associated with cops." | todayilearned |
"TIL after being scolded by a woman who felt that his shoes were too expensive for kids, Shaq forwent a $40 million deal with Reebok & signed one with Walmart. He then brought in designers from Reebok so that his Walmart shoes would look costlier than the $20 price. Over 400 million pairs were sold." | todayilearned |
"TIL the founder of Hyundai was born to an impoverished family of peasants in what is now North Korea. In 1998, he sent 1001 cows to his hometown in North Korea as a repayment 1000 times over for a cow that he stole in the early 1930s to afford his train ticket to Seoul and escape from poverty." | todayilearned |
"TIL in Lord of War starring Nicholas Cage, they bought 3000 real guns for the filming because it was cheaper to buy real guns and resell later than buying props. They also rented 50 tanks which were only available for a short period because the source had to sell them to Libya later" | todayilearned |
"TIL a man falsely imprisoned for 10 years spent most of his time at the library to study law and prove his innocence, and then became a lawyer to help free other people who have been falsely convicted." | todayilearned |
"TIL Dogs get sprayed by Skunks so often because Skunks lift their tails as a warning, Dogs see this as "Come smell my butt" which is the EXACT OPPOSITE MESSAGE from what the Skunk is trying to send." | todayilearned |
"TIL why Five Guys gives extra fries at the bottom of the bag. They do it so the guests think they are getting a good deal. However, the extra fries are already factored into the menu price. Founder Jerry Murrell also says it is better for customers to feel that their serving of fries was too large." | todayilearned |
"TIL that in “Forrest Gump,” when his microphone is cut off at the rally, what you don’t hear him say is “Sometimes when people go to Vietnam, they go home to their mommas without any legs. Sometimes they don’t go home at all. That’s a bad thing. That’s all I have to say about that.”" | todayilearned |
"TIL Gordon Ramsay set up a business inside a London prison that taught inmates how to bake and sold the goods on the outside. Providing the prison with financial support while giving the inmates work experience they could use to find honest work after their sentence." | todayilearned |
"TIL in 1995, France found a man guilty of killing a teen girl, but he was able to avoid sentencing by hiding out in Germany. In 2009, the victim's father hired a team to kidnap the killer out of Germany and dump him in front of a French courthouse. It worked, and he is now serving 15 years." | todayilearned |
"TIL that an outlaw isn't any mere criminal, but rather a criminal who has been sentenced to be "outside of the protection of the law". He has no right to trial, and can be killed or persecuted by anybody." | todayilearned |
"TIL a guide dog named Roselle led a group of people including her blind owner down 78 flights of stairs before the North Tower collapsed on 9/11. She only stopped to give kisses to a woman who was having a panic attack." | todayilearned |
"TIL the crew of 'Return of the Jedi' mocked the character design of Admiral Ackbar, deeming it too ugly. Director Richard Marquand refused to alter it, saying, "I think it's good to tell kids that good people aren't necessarily good looking people and that bad people aren't necessarily ugly people."" | todayilearned |
"TIL that the firm Cantor Fitzgerald lost 658 employees on 9/11. The CEO, who was taking his child to school that day, later distributed $180 million to the families and offered jobs to all children of the victims. 57 of those children were employed by Cantor Fitzgerald as of 2016." | todayilearned |
"TIL after writing the main riff of Seven Nation Army, Jack White planned to save it in case he was ever asked to write a James Bond theme. Deciding this was unlikely to happen, he recorded the song anyways. Five years later, he was asked to write the theme song for the Bond film Quantum of Solace." | todayilearned |
"TIL the creators of "Parks and Recreation" did research for the show by interviewing actual government officials. One said, "Well, I’m a libertarian, so I don’t really believe in the mission of my job. Yes, I’m aware of the irony." The character of Ron Swanson was born." | todayilearned |
"TIL fish eggs can survive and hatch after passing through a duck, providing one explanation of how seemingly pristine, isolated bodies of water can become stocked with fish" | todayilearned |
"TIL Washington Redskins' owner Dan Snyder once cut down trees along the Potomac River so that he could see it from his house. The trees were located in a national park, and a ranger who raised concern about the issue was raided by US Marshals" | todayilearned |
"TIL the Hawaiian island of Kauai encourages tourists to check a dog out of shelters for a day as part of a field trip for dogs program. Having the dogs out and about gives them exercise and increases their chances of getting adopted by a local." | todayilearned |
"TIL After Martin Luther King was killed in 1968, his funeral was held at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, and a small group of current students were chosen to be ushers for his funeral. One of those ushers was Samuel L. Jackson." | todayilearned |
"TIL the Make-a-Wish Foundation granted a child to visit the set of Thor: Ragnarok. When Thor sees Hulk enter the arena on Sakaar, the child said Thor should say "He's a friend from work!"" | todayilearned |
"TIL that Mario Puzo, the author of the Godfather books who’d also adapted them to film, had no idea what he was doing as he’d never written a screenplay before. After winning two Oscars, he decided to buy a book on screenwriting to learn how. In the first chapter, it said “Study Godfather I”." | todayilearned |
"TIL Max Planck was told by his professor to not go into Physics because "almost everything is already discovered". Planck said he didn't want to discover anything, just learn the fundamentals. He went on to originate quantum theory and win a Nobel Prize." | todayilearned |
"TIL Gary Gygax's wife was convinced he was having an affair so she followed him to a dimly lit basement and burst into the room only to find him and his friends hunched over hand drawn maps. Gary would go on to invent the role playing game "Dungeons and Dragons"" | todayilearned |
"TIL that Samuel L. Jackson heard someone repeating his Ezekiel 25:17 speech to him, he turned to discover it was Marlon Brando who gave him his number. When Jackson called, it was a Chinese restaurant. But when he asked for Brando, he picked up. It was Brando's way of screening calls." | todayilearned |
"TIL - In 1836, a sewer worker accidentally discovered an old drain which ran directly into the Bank of England's gold vault. He wrote letters to the directors of the bank and requested a meeting inside the vault at an hour of their choosing - and popped out of the floor to greet them" | todayilearned |
"TIL that after Beethoven went deaf, he found he could affix a metal rod to his piano and bite down on it while he played, enabling him to hear perfectly through vibrations in his jawbone. The process is called bone conduction." | todayilearned |
"TIL that the Mythbusters once tested a combination of common materials that made an extremely powerful explosive. They deleted the tapes and swore to never release the information, then contacted DARPA and warned them about the possibility of misuse from the combination." | todayilearned |
"TIL: Teddy Roosevelt was chosen as Vice President due to his support of anti-trust reform, and conservatives knew the VP had little power. Six months into the term, President McKinley was assassinated and Roosevelt became President, ushering in an unprecedented era of anti-trust and labor reforms." | todayilearned |
"TIL only three people in the nation were qualified to hand-pack the parachutes for Apollo 15. Their expertise was so vital, they were not allowed to ride in the same car together for fear that a single auto accident could cripple the space program." | todayilearned |
"TIL the Japanese bullet train system is equipped with a network of sensitive seismometers. On March 11, 2011, one of the seismometers detected an 8.9 magnitude earthquake 12 seconds before it hit and sent a stop signal to 33 trains. As a result, only one bullet train derailed that day." | todayilearned |
"TIL that Angelina Jolie once tried to hire a hitman to kill her, because she felt that a murder would be easier on her family than her committing suicide. The would-be-hitman talked her out of it by asking her to wait a month." | todayilearned |
"TIL when Robert Ballard (professor of oceanography) announced a mission to find the Titanic, it was a cover story for a classified mission to search for lost nuclear submarines. They finished before they were due back, so the team spent the extra time looking for the Titanic and actually found it." | todayilearned |
"TIL that a Polish environmental charity put a SIM card in a GPS tracker to follow the migratory pattern of a white stork. They lost track of the stork and later received a phone bill for $2,700; someone in Sudan had taken the SIM from the tracker and made over 20 hours of calls." | todayilearned |
"TIL there's a restaurant in New York that doesn't employ chefs; they employ grandmas. Every day, a different grandma from around the world designs her own menu." | todayilearned |
"TIL when Lawrence Anthony, known as "The Elephant Whisperer", passed away. A herd of elephants arrived at his house in South Africa to mourn him. Although the elephants were not alerted to the event, they travelled to his house and stood around for two days, and then dispersed." | todayilearned |
"TIL a suicide bomber with explosives in his laptop boarded the Somali owned Daallo Airlines in 2016 intending to blow the whole aircraft. Twenty minutes after the takeoff, the bomb exploded, creating a hole in the plane, and the suicide bomber was sucked out of the plane. He was the only fatality." | todayilearned |
"TIL Martin Short, Steve Martin and Tom Hanks have regular ‘colonoscopy parties’ where they prep together overnight and share one car on the ride to get their colonoscopies the next day" | todayilearned |
"TIL Jim Carrey was the first actor to have three films go straight to number one in the same year. The year was 1994, and the films were The Mask, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, and Dumb and Dumber." | todayilearned |
"TIL Seth Putnam, lead singer of the grindcore band Anal Cunt, wrote a song making fun of comatose people called ‘You’re in a Coma’. Putnam himself was in a coma years later, and after waking remarked that “being in a coma was just as fuckin’ stupid as I wrote it was”." | todayilearned |
"TIL that in ancient Rome, commoners would evacuate entire cities in acts of revolt called "Secessions of the Plebeians", leaving the elite in the cities to fend for themselves" | todayilearned |
"TIL a woman was sentenced to life in prison for poisoning her child to death with antifreeze. She gave birth to a second child while in prison, who was given to foster care. But he became sick with the same symptoms, indicating a genetic metabolic disorder, not poisoning. She was later released." | todayilearned |
"TIL: Nirvana played a concert in Beunos Aires where the crowd threw mud and trash at the all-girl opening act. Kurt Cobain was so upset that he sabotaged the show by playing mostly lesser known songs and teasing 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' without ever playing it." | todayilearned |
"TIL astronomer Harlow Shapley firmly believed that there was only one galaxy in the universe but when he was presented with an evidence that disproved his view, he said "it destroyed his universe." Then he completely changed his view and devoted his subsequent career in mapping 76,000 galaxies." | todayilearned |
"TIL Steve Jobs never coded for Apple. According to Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, he didn't do any original design and one of Apple's earliest employees also stated that Woz was the inventor while Jobs was the marketing person." | todayilearned |
"TIL of Bob Fletcher, a man who took care of the farms of three Japanese American families while they were interned during World War 2. By keeping their farms running and paying their taxes and mortgages, he ensured the families didn't lose everything. He was even shot at for supporting them." | todayilearned |
"TIL Eminem's song "Lose Yourself" was the first rap song to win an Oscar for Best Original Song, but Eminem did not even watch the awards because he did not think he stood a chance at winning. Instead, he fell asleep watching cartoons with his daughter." | todayilearned |
"TIL Nas listed his then 7-year-old daughter, Destiny Jones, as an executive producer on his fifth studio album Stillmatic to ensure she would always receive royalty checks from the album." | todayilearned |
"TIL The bellybutton is so dirty scientists are finding new unknown bacteria. One person had bacterium previously found only on Japanese soil, where he had never been." | todayilearned |
"TIL: You are less likely to die during an economic depression. This is mostly attributed to cleaner air, reduced traffic, and fewer dollars spent on vices like tobacco and alcohol." | todayilearned |
"TIL scientists discovered a dinosaur tail perfectly preserved in amber. It is full of feathers." | todayilearned |
"TIL that “TurboTax Free” is not actually free, but “TurboTax Free File” actually IS free (if you make under 36k). This was done to purposefully mislead the public into paying for a service that should be free according to the IRS." | todayilearned |
"TIL in 2005, a guy named Doug Heckman read the EULA before he installed some PC software. The agreement included a clause offering 'financial compensation' to licensees who actually read the license agreement. He emailed the company, referred to the clause and the company sent him a check for $1,000" | todayilearned |
"TIL that in 2020 two rival Drug Cartels Decided to have a friendly soccer Match. The match ended with 16 deaths and 5 injuries" | todayilearned |
"TIL that Prince William and Prince Harry pulled a prank on their grandmother the Queen, by changing her voicemail answering message to say, "Hey wassup! This is Liz. Sorry I'm away from the throne. For a hotline to Philip, press one. For Charles, press two. And for the corgis, press three."" | todayilearned |
"TIL 22-yr-old Canadian man John McCue took it upon himself to fill potholes with the sign: "I filled the potholes. Pay me instead of your taxes." Drivers gave him cash, coffee and joints for filling in potholes." | todayilearned |
"TIL about FBI agent Robert Hanssen. He was tasked to find a mole within the FBI after the FBI's moles in the KGB were caught. Robert Hanssen was the mole and had been working with the KGB since 1979." | todayilearned |
"TIL learned that in 1985 a guy programmed his computer to call Jerry Falwell Sr's toll free prayer line every 30 seconds for 8 months. It clogged up the lines and cost them over $750k in reverse charges." | todayilearned |
"TIL when former 'Tonight Show' host Johnny Carson died in 2005, 'Late Show' host David Letterman recited a comedic monologue at the beginning of the show, revealing later that every joke had been written by Carson, who had been sending in one or two jokes a week during his retirement" | todayilearned |
"TIL a group of undercover Detroit police posing as drug dealers tried to arrest another group of undercover police posing as drug buyers." | todayilearned |
"TIL while Sharon was giving up, sick in bed with cancer, Ozzy asked Robin Williams to visit her. He hopped in her sick bed randomly and apparently her family went from crying to peeing themselves laughing in a second. She loved it and went from giving up to chemo the next day." | todayilearned |
"TIL that in 1825 painter Samuel Morse received a letter which read that his wife was sick. The day after that a new one said that she was dead. When 2 days later he went to his wife, he discovered that she was already buried. Pissed off for the slowness of communications, he invented the Morse code." | todayilearned |
"TIL Ghostbusters actor Ernie Hudson, who played Winston Zeddemore, auditioned as the voice for the same character in the animated series but was rejected because they didn't think he sounded enough like Winston from the movie." | todayilearned |
"TIL The reason why we view neanderthals as hunched over and degenerate is that the first skeleton to be found was arthritic." | todayilearned |
Subsets and Splits
No saved queries yet
Save your SQL queries to embed, download, and access them later. Queries will appear here once saved.