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"TIL in 2012, a burger king employee anonymously posted an image on 4-chan of him putting his feet in lettuce, with the caption: "This is the lettuce you eat at Burger King." It took 20 minutes for people to track down the branch the employee worked at and contact the news. He was promptly fired." | todayilearned |
"TIL when a 400-year rare old Japanese bonsai tree was stolen, the bonsai master gave out instructions on how the thief could care for the plant so it doesn't die, as he felt it was his child." | todayilearned |
"TIL Larry Hillblom, the H of DHL, regularly took "sex safari" trips to Asia to prey on underage girls. When he died in a plane crash, 4 of the illegitimate children he fathered were able to claim $50 million each from his estate." | todayilearned |
"TIL that even though Philo Farnsworth, the inventor of electronic television, was disappointed by it for most of his life, he changed his mind the day he saw Neil Armstrong walk on the Moon thanks to his invention, telling his wife "this has made it all worthwhile"." | todayilearned |
"TIL Fred Rogers proposed to his wife Joanne via letter. When she received it, Joanne rushed to a payphone to respond. She was so nervous that when Fred answered the phone she was focused on the phone booth graffiti and greeted him by saying, "Shit." Fred laughed and she agreed to marry him." | todayilearned |
"TIL that In 2018, A hacker broke into people’s routers (100,000 of them) and patched their vulnerabilities up so that they couldn’t be abused by other hackers." | todayilearned |
"TIL that during the filming of the Sound of Music, the city of Salzburg refused to allow Nazi flags to be hung off buildings for filming. The director threatened to instead use real newsreel footage of the city enthusiastically greeting Hitler. The city quickly backpedalled and allowed the shot." | todayilearned |
"TIL that in Germany, it is illegal to kill any animal that is a vertebrate "without proper reason" like the animal being ill or a danger to humans. Because of this, all German animal shelters are no-kill." | todayilearned |
"TIL an average silver back can deadlift 1800 lb and their grip can crush a crocodile's skull | They are 4 to 9 times stronger than an average human male." | todayilearned |
"TIL after "the world’s largest beach clean-up" at Mumbai's Versova beach, Olive Ridley turtles returned to lay eggs for the first time in 20 years." | todayilearned |
"TIL that Harper Lee’s friends gave her a full year’s salary for Christmas in 1956 so that she’d be able to take a year off from work to write. Lee used that time to write “To Kill a Mockingbird,” which has since sold over 30 million copies." | todayilearned |
"TIL: When roosters open their beaks fully, their external auditory canals completely closed off. Basically, roosters have built in earplugs. This helps prevent them from damaging their hearing when they crow." | todayilearned |
"TIL" George Washington allegedly said before his death that he "would never set foot on English soil again," so when they erected a statue of him in London, they put US soil under the statue to honor that claim" | todayilearned |
"TIL Research shows that starting school at 10am instead of 8:30am halves student illness and improves academic performance." | todayilearned |
"TIL Dave Grohl wrote and recorded an entire album by himself, singing and playing each instrument in the studio. He chose the name Foo Fighters to hide his identity. After a record label picked it up he needed to recruit members to perform the songs live. Thus the Foo Fighters were created." | todayilearned |
"TIL that in 1995, a man received a "check" for $95,000 as junk mail. Jokingly, he deposited it into his account. The "check" met all of the legal criteria for a check and was cashed." | todayilearned |
"TIL that LBJ constantly asked the flight crew of Air Force One to change the temperature of the cabin. Eventually, they installed a fake control knob for him to 'control' the temperature himself. The president stopped complaining." | todayilearned |
"TIL that after studios refused, Monty Python and the Holy Grail was instead financed by the rock stars Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Genesis, Jethro Tull and Elton John who all saw it as simply 'a good tax write-off"." | todayilearned |
"TIL in 1954, Ernest Hemingway survived two plane crashes in two days. He was presumed dead almost 24 hours later until he was spotted coming out of the jungle carrying bananas and a bottle of gin." | todayilearned |
"TIL that farmers in USA are hacking their John Deere tractors with Ukrainian firmware, which seems to be the only way to actually *own* the machines and their software, rather than rent them for lifetime from John Deere." | todayilearned |
"TIL in 2015 a fan of the Austrailian band Peking Duk got backstage at their concert by adding himself as a family member on their Wiki page and showing it to security. The band wasn't even upset, saying "We ended up having a bunch of beers with him and he was an absolute legend."" | todayilearned |
"TIL Quebec banned ads for toys and fast food aimed at children under 13, resulting in lowered childhood obesity rates." | todayilearned |
"TIL after Columbine, Marilyn Manson wrote an article condemning the media’s coverage of the event. In it he writes, “the media, since their inception, have turned criminals into folk heroes. They just created two new ones... Don’t be surprised if every kid who gets pushed around has two new idols.”" | todayilearned |
"TIL that in Japan, if a working day falls between two public holidays, that working day becomes an additional holiday by law, also known as a "Citizen's Holiday"." | todayilearned |
"TIL Grand Theft Auto V cost $265 million to make -- the largest budget of any video game at that time -- but turned around and made $1 billion in its first 72 hours" | todayilearned |
"TIL in 2004, a group of Yale students pranked Harvard by posing as a Harvard Prep Squad and handing out placards to over 1,800 Harvard fans at a football game. The Harvard fans were told they would spell out, “Go Harvard” when in reality, it actually said “We Suck.”" | todayilearned |
"TIL that India requires voting booths within 2 km of every registered voter. This means some poll workers trek for days through mountains and jungles to reach small, remote villages, sometimes for only a single registered voter." | todayilearned |
"TIL "Nearly 75 percent of all aluminum ever produced is still in use today" due to recycling" | todayilearned |
"TIL that when Michael Jackson granted Weird Al Yankovic permission to do "Fat" (a parody of "Bad"), Jackson allowed him to use the same set built for his own "Badder" video from the Moonwalker film. Yankovic said that Jackson's support helped to gain approval from other artists he wanted to parody." | todayilearned |
"TIL in the 1790s, an Oxford student introduced using guano (bird poop) as fertiliser. He spread guano across the university lawn, using it to spell G U A N O. The lawn was soon scrubbed, but when spring came, the word GUANO was clearly visible, growing higher and thicker than the rest of the grass" | todayilearned |
"TIL that after visiting a prison in Norway that treated prisoners humanely, a warden from North Dakota went back and reformed her prison based on Norway's model. It later saw sharp decline in violence against inmates and threats against staff" | todayilearned |
"TIL GM recalled 800k cars in 2014 for faulty ignitions. The cars would shut off while being driven which meant drivers lost power steering/brakes, and the airbags wouldn't deploy. They knew about the problem since 2005 but never fixed it because it would be 'too expensive'. 124 people died." | todayilearned |
"TIL that a guy called Dale Schroeder used his life savings to send 33 students to college. he grew up poor in Iowa, never married, had no children, and worked as a carpenter at the same company for 67 years and only owned 2 jeans." | todayilearned |
"TIL that when Winston Churchill Sold Chartwell, the family home, to the National Trust, he required that there always be a marmalade cat named Jock in "comfortable residence." The Trust honored that request. The current occupant is Jock VII, a six month old rescue kitten." | todayilearned |
"TIL that in 1986 an astronomer trying to trace a 75 cent computer time discrepancy for 10 months eventually found a German hacker selling defense secrets to the KGB" | todayilearned |
"TIL: Researchers taught African grey parrots to buy food using tokens. They were then paired up, one parrot given ten tokens and the other none. Without any incentive for sharing, parrots with tokens started to give some to their broke partners so that everyone could eat." | todayilearned |
"TIL a homeless man found a 10 000$ check on the street meant for a real estate broker and found a way to return it. So, touched, the broker awarded him a place to live and arranged for a job interview. A year later, he was on the board of directors of one of their foundations." | todayilearned |
"TIL that Volvo opened up the patent for three-point seatbelt cause "it had more value as a free life saving tool than something to profit from"" | todayilearned |
"TIL A researcher once played a recording of an elephant who had died. The sound was coming from a speaker hidden in a thicket. The family went wild calling, looking all around. The dead elephant’s daughter called for days afterward. The researchers never again did such a thing." | todayilearned |
"TIL That Elvis Presley's manager sold "I Hate Elvis" badges as a way to make money from people who weren't buying Elvis merchandise" | todayilearned |
"TIL when pimps get arrested, their cash can legally be confiscated but not their jewelry. This is why pimps wear lots of jewelry so that they can "re-pawn" it for bail money." | todayilearned |
"TIL that Mike Judge moved to Texas and a storm blew off a part of his fence. After his new neighbors fixed it for him, no questions asked, it became the basis for King Of The Hill - "about neighbors who... ultimately, do the right thing and do right by people and are basically good people."" | todayilearned |
"TIL the Catholic Church has accepted Darwinian evolution as compatible with Christianity since 1950." | todayilearned |
"TIL Hugh Jackman took a pay cut to ensure "Logan" would be rated R. Since 'R-rated' films typically limit the overall audience that can attend, Jackman's reduced salary brought the budget down to an acceptable place to warrant an R rating." | todayilearned |
"TIL about Whipping Tom of 1681, a nickname given to a serial spanker in London. He would wait for an unaccompanied woman, grab her, lift her dress and slap her buttocks whiles shouting "Spanko!" before fleeing. Vigilantes would dress in women's clothing and patrol the areas he was known to operate." | todayilearned |
"TIL that four high-school students in the ‘70s are the reason we no longer have pay toilets in America. They created an organization called CEPTIA, and were able to successfully lobby against the issue. 8 years later, pay toilets were all but nonexistent throughout the US." | todayilearned |
"TIL that Ethan Zuckerman, the man who invented pop-up ads has apologized to the world for creating one of the Internet's most hated forms of advertising." | todayilearned |
"TIL a majority of the people Christopher Walken interacted with as a child were non-native English speakers, including his father. Walken attributes his unique halting speaking style to watching people hesitate to think of the right English word." | todayilearned |
"TIL Tom Cruise divorced all three of his ex-wives when they turned 33 (Mimi Rogers, Nicole Kidman, Katie Holmes) and each is 11 years younger than the last." | todayilearned |
"TIL after the massive success of his #1 hit "Somebody That I Used to Know", Gotye stopped recording solo music, went back to his old band and hasn't released a song under the Gotye name ever since" | todayilearned |
"TIL after Chamillionaire won a Grammy for “Ridin’”, he approached ‘Weird Al’ Yancovic on the red carpet, thanked him for the “White and Nerdy” parody and told him “I think your parody is a big reason why I won this Grammy, because you made it undeniable that my song was the rap song of the year."" | todayilearned |
"TIL that Keanu Reeves runs a private charitable foundation to fund cancer research and children’s hospitals. In 2009, he told Ladies Home Journal: "I don’t like to attach my name to it, I just let the foundation do what it does."" | todayilearned |
"TIL: CBS used to add bird songs to their golf broadcasts to get rid of awkward silences until they got caught by someone watching at home who knew the bird songs belonged to birds that didn’t live in the region in which the golf tournament was being played." | todayilearned |
"TIL Stan Lee, co-creator of Daredevil, worried that blind people would be offended at how far he exaggerated the way a blind person's other senses are enhanced, until he started receiving letters telling him that blind people greatly enjoyed having Daredevil comics read to them." | todayilearned |
"TIL GoldeneEye 007’s multiplayer mode was so last-minute that neither Rare nor Nintendo management knew about it. The first time executives saw anything was when programmers were playing it." | todayilearned |
"TIL of the speed camera lottery in Stockholm, Sweden. Drive at or under the speed limit and you'll be entered into a lottery where the prize fund comes from the fines that speeders pay. Average speed reduced from 32km/h to 25km/h (a reduction of 22%)" | todayilearned |
"TIL Dreamworks used to punish their animators who failed at their work on Prince of Egypt, by sending them to work on Shrek. Appaerently the punishment even had a nickname - to be "Shreked."" | todayilearned |
"TIL, That since domestication, dogs' eyes have changed. Dogs now have eye muscles that make them more expressive and infant-like. These same muscles are absent in wolves, their closest relative." | todayilearned |
"TIL in 1714, a Norwegian captain and an English captain had a 14-hour long ship fight. Afterwards, both ships were badly damaged and the Norwegian captain was running out of ammo. He sent an envoy to the English ship, asking if he could borrow some of their ammo. They said no." | todayilearned |
"TIL that Lake Superior has an island which has a lake which has an island which has a pond which has a boulder, which, when the pond floods, becomes the largest island in the largest lake on the largest island in the largest lake on the largest island in the largest lake in the world." | todayilearned |
"TIL that a "Silent Man" in the UK repeatedly gets arrested for standing on a certain road to block traffic. He never speaks a word, not even to the court or his own lawyer. Everytime he is released, he repeats the crime and remains completely silent." | todayilearned |
"TIL that Ancient Babylonians did math in base 60 instead of base 10. That's why we have 60 seconds in a minute and 360 degrees in a circle." | todayilearned |
"TIL Frank Zappa was a futurist who was enthusiastic for the possibility of holographic imagery. So much so that he recorded footage of himself in the early 70s with the intention to be used when technology got to that point. A Frank Zappa holographic tour using that footage starts next year." | todayilearned |
"TIL a US law firm set up honeypots on torrent-sharing site The Pirate Bay and then sued people who downloaded their torrents. The matter reached the FBI and the pirate site accepted to collaborate with the feds resulting in the crooked lawyers getting jail time." | todayilearned |
"TIL a quiet American POW was nicknamed "The Incredibly Stupid One" by his Vietnamese captors. Upon his return to the US, he provided the names of over 200 prisoners of war, which he had memorized to the tune of "Old MacDonald Had a Farm."" | todayilearned |
"TIL ADHD doesn't always mean 'short attention span'. 'Hyperfocusing' on a task for hours on end is also a known symptom of ADHD, where the inability to stop is considered to be the problem." | todayilearned |
"TIL: Jim Carey used to get to do stand up in his 7th grade class. He used humor to fit in and his teacher made a deal with him - if he was quiet all day he would get 15 minutes at the end of class where he did stand up using material from life, the class, or doing impressions of faculty members." | todayilearned |
"TIL that in Singapore, people who opt-out of donating their organs are put on a lower priority to receive an organ transplant than those who did not opt-out." | todayilearned |
"TIL - CIA revealed a "heart attack" gun in 1975. A battery operated gun which fired a dart of frozen water & shellfish toxin. Once inside the body it would melt leaving only a small red mark on the victim where it entered. The official cause of death would always be a heart attack." | todayilearned |
"TIL Why paper cuts are so painful is b/c at a microscopic level, paper is actually quite rough. A knife makes a straight cut, but paper acts like a saw blade and does more damage to cells and nerve endings. Paper also leaves behind tiny fibres and chemical residues, irritating the wound even more." | todayilearned |
"TIL that eight years after JFK’s assassination, Jackie Kennedy avoided the public unveiling of their White House portraits, but the Nixons graciously agreed to a secret, private tour for her and her kids. It was her only return visit." | todayilearned |
"TIL that after firefighters saved piglets from a barn fire, 6 months later the farmer sent them sausages made from the piglets as a thank you gift" | todayilearned |
"TIL In 1967, Paul McCartney forgot his passport when travelling to France to shoot a music video. He told the agents, ‘You know who I am so why do you need to see a photograph of me in a passport?’ And was let through." | todayilearned |
"TIL that an annual supply of bottled water for a person who consumes 8 glasses a day would cost approximately $200; the same amount of tap water would cost approximately $0.33." | todayilearned |
"TIL that the Michelin Man is white is because rubber tires are naturally white. It wasn't until 1912 that companies started mixing carbon chemicals with the rubber to make black tires. This process is not an aesthetic change, but a structural one, making the tires stronger and durable." | todayilearned |
"TIL that according to a study, strict parents can turn their kids into more effective liars because children who are afraid to tell the truth learn more deceptive behaviors to avoid getting in trouble." | todayilearned |
"TIL that Billy West, who does the voice of Philip J. Fry's on Futurama among other characters, intentionally made Fry's voice close to his natural voice as a job security measure because it would be more difficult to replace him." | todayilearned |
"TIL that the moon is 1/400th the size of the sun but also 1/400th the distance from Earth which results in the moon and the sun being the same size in the sky, a coincidence not shared by any other known planet-moon combination." | todayilearned |
"TIL Anthony Daniels, who endured years of discomfort in the C-3PO costume, was so annoyed by Alan Tudyk (Rogue One) playing K-2SO in the comfort of a motion-capture suit that he cursed at Tudyk. Tudyk later joked that a "fuck you" from Daniels was among the highest compliments he had ever received." | todayilearned |
"TIL Even though he received surgery to correct his nearsightedness, Horace Grant continued to wear his trademark goggles on the court during his NBA career after hearing from parents that he was a inspiration to children who wore glasses." | todayilearned |
"TIL that when quirky theatrical producer David Merrick got bad reviews for his 1961 musical, he found 7 random denizens of New York with names identical to those of 7 top theatre critics. He asked the civilians to talk ecstatically of the musical, then published an ad with their praises and names." | todayilearned |
"TIL in 2009 Burger King ran the "Whopper sacrifice" campaign, which gave a free whopper to anyone who deleted 10 friends on Facebook. Facebook suspended the program because Burger King was alerting people letting them know they'd been dropped for a sandwich" | todayilearned |
"TIL Donnie Yen (the blind monk in Star Wars: Rogue One/star of the Ip Man films) was once leaving a Hong Kong nightclub with his girlfriend when they were attacked by a gang who had been bothering them earlier in the night. Donnie hospitalised 8 of them." | todayilearned |
"TIL that the NFL made a commitee to falsify information to cover up brain damage in their players" | todayilearned |
"TIL President Diouf began an anti-AIDS program in Senegal, before the virus was able to take off. He used media and schools to promote safe-sex messages and required prostitutes to be registered. While AIDS was decimating much of Africa, the infection rate for Senegal stayed below 2 percent" | todayilearned |
"TIL if you publish a book in Norway, the government will buy 1000 copies (1,500 if a children's book) and distribute them to libraries throughout the country." | todayilearned |
"TIL that Schwarzenegger faked interest in the movie "Stop Or My Mom Will Shoot" to trick Stallone into starring in it. Stallone later called the movie "maybe one of the worst films in the entire solar system, including alien productions we’ve never seen."" | todayilearned |
"TIL in 1959 a white man from Texas disguised himself as a black man and traveled for six weeks on greyhound buses. After publishing his experiences with racism he was forced to move to Mexico for several years due to death threats." | todayilearned |
"TIL that a woman who successfully underwent a lung transplant went into anaphylactic shock after eating peanut butter. Prior to her transplant she never had problems eating peanuts. She learned the 12 yr.old who had donated the lungs had had a peanut allergy, and had died from an anaphylactic shock." | todayilearned |
"TIL that comedian Ryan Stiles from Whose Line is it Anyway? has been a frequent fund raiser for children with burn injuries, raising over $500,000 for the Burned Children Recovery Center since 2009, helping the foundation to recover from the economy crash of 2008." | todayilearned |
"TIL that Wayne Gretzky is the only Hockey player to have scored over 200 points in a season, and did so a total of four times. His stunning success as a Hockey player was immortalized in the fact that not only did is own team retire 99, Gretzky's Jersey number, but the league as whole did as well!" | todayilearned |
"TIL when Brendan Shanahan was 14 years old, he asked star hockey player Rick Vaive for an autograph, but was rudely brushed away. 4 years later, Shanahan was in the NHL, and fought and beat up Vaive the first time they played against each other" | todayilearned |
"TIL that while filming 'Spider-Man: Homecoming' (2017), Michael Keaton would whisper 'I'm Batman' to Tom Holland during fight scenes. "We have a fight in the movie and I punch him. He turns around and says , ‘I’m Batman.’ He kept doing Batman quotes on set” Holland said." | todayilearned |
"TIL that the "drink 8 glasses of water a day" is based on a 1945 recommendation that had no medical basis. The current recommendation is "drink when you are thirsty, unless you are outside on a hot day or are elderly- then drink a bit more."" | todayilearned |
"TIL : When Queen Elizabeth visited the set of "Game of Thrones" she refused to sit on the Iron Throne because there is a law disallowing her from sitting on a foreign throne." | todayilearned |
"TIL that Charlie Chaplin made the Hitler mocking film, "The Great Dictator", in 1940 using his own money because none of the Hollywood studios were comfortable irking the Germans as they had financial relations with them. The film is said to be one of the greatest works of Charlie Chaplin." | todayilearned |
"TIL of Gabe Sonnier, a man who started off as a janitor in a Louisiana elementary school until one day in 1985, when he was inspired by the then-principal to take up teaching. Gabe was 39 years old when he started studying for a teaching degree. He’s now the principal of that elementary school." | todayilearned |
"TIL Joseph Bazalgette, the man who designed London's sewers in the 1860's, said 'Well, we're only going to do this once and there's always the unforeseen' and doubled the pipe diameter. If he had not done this, it would have overflowed in the 1960's (its still in use today)." | todayilearned |
"TIL of Kelly, a dolphin whose trainers gave her fish for bringing them litter/dead gulls to clean her pool. She started hiding fish under a rock in her pool, then used fish to lure gulls which she brought to her trainers to get more fish. She taught her calf the strategy, who taught more calves." | todayilearned |
"TIL Texas didn’t have safety regulations on natural gas until after a school blew up and killed hundreds of children. Nobody was held accountable, but they passed strict regulations afterwards. It was so bad that even Hitler sent a letter of condolence." | todayilearned |
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