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"TIL “Mushroom management” is where employees aren’t told about the ideas or general state of the company, and are given work without knowing its purpose. So called because they are “kept in the dark and fed bullshit”" | todayilearned |
"TIL that Mozart disliked performer Adriana Ferrarese del Bene, who was know for nodding her head down on low notes and raising her head on high notes, so much, that he wrote a song for her to perform that had lots of jumps from low to high just so he could see her head "bob like a chicken" onstage." | todayilearned |
"TIL the TV show 'The Voice' heavily promotes the fact that the winner gets a free record deal. However, many of them get dropped shortly after signing. The winner of season 7 even admits none of the label executives knew who he was when he first entered the office shortly after winning." | todayilearned |
"TIL that an ancient Roman oracle once prophesied that "Caligula had no more chance of becoming emperor than of riding a horse across the Bay of Baiae". After becoming emperor, Caligula ordered ships to construct the largest pontoon bridge in history, and rode his horse across the Bay of Baiae." | todayilearned |
"TIL a dad in Texas couldn’t find an amusement park that would accommodate his daughter with special needs so he sold his homebuilding business and built a completely accessible amusement park for kids with special needs called Morgan’s Wonderland." | todayilearned |
"TIL that when released in France in 2007, Ratatouille was not only praised for its technical accuracy and attention to culinary detail, it also drew the 4th highest opening-day attendance in French movie history." | todayilearned |
"TIL the term "genuine leather" isn't reassuring you that the item is made of real leather, it as an actual distinct grade of leather and is the second worst type of leather there is." | todayilearned |
"TIL about Congressman Charlie Wilson's revenge. When he was 13, his neighbor, Charles Hazard poisoned his dog by mixing glass into its food. Years later, when Hazard was running for office, Wilson drove 96 people to the polls, telling them how Hazard had killed his dog. Hazard lost by sixteen votes." | todayilearned |
"TIL that Apatheism is the belief that if a god exists, or not, it does not matter, because the effect is the same. Therefore there is no point engaging in worship or even positing the question of existence of the god at all." | todayilearned |
"TIL Billy Joel got into an argument with a younger man about what the worst era to be young in was. The younger man told Joel that at least he got to grow up in the 50s when "nothing happened." Flabbergasted, Joel began listing the events of the 50s, which later became "We Didn't Start the Fire"" | todayilearned |
"TIL about Klepetan, a male stork who migrates from South Africa to Croatia every year for the last 15 years to be with Melena, a female stork who can't fly after being shot by a hunter. She lives indoors until his return and they stay in a nest on a roof until he leaves. They've had over 40 babies." | todayilearned |
"TIL: Bats eat enough insects to save the US over $1 Billion a year in crop damage and pesticide." | todayilearned |
"TIL Chadwick Boseman was accepted into a prestigious summer theater program at Oxford University, but couldn't afford to go. He secured funding through a private benefactor, who turned out to be Denzel Washington. Over 20 yrs later Chadwick thanked him in person at the premiere of "Black Panther."" | todayilearned |
"TIL Princess Diana didn't initially die at the scene of her car accident, but 5 hours later due to a tear in her heart's pulmonary vein. She would've had 80% chance of survival if she had been wearing her seat belt." | todayilearned |
"TIL about the Finnish "Day-fine" system; most infractions are fined based on what you could spend in a day based on your income. The more severe the infraction the more "day-fines" you have to pay, which can cause millionaires to recieve speeding tickets of 100,000+$" | todayilearned |
"TIL about Sarah Rector, an impoverished black girl who became a millionaire oil baron when oil was discovered on the land allotted to her by the government. She was so wealthy the Oklahoma legislature declared her to be a white person." | todayilearned |
"TIL that the refrain “when one door closes, another opens" is actually an Alexander Graham Bell quote which he followed by saying "but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.”" | todayilearned |
"TIL that NYC beekeepers noticed their bees making red honey, which led to an investigation that ultimately exposed the city's largest marijuana farm in the basement of a Brooklyn cherry factory" | todayilearned |
"TIL US Navy's submarine periscope controls used to cost $38,000, but were replaced by $20 xbox controllers." | todayilearned |
"TIL when the Bulgarian monarch died at 49 during WW2, his 6-year-old son Simeon became the leader. Shortly after, 97% of Bulgaria voted to end the monarchy in favor of a democracy. In 2005, 64-year-old Simeon ran for Prime Minister of Bulgaria and won, making him the country's leader again." | todayilearned |
"TIL a riddle from 1688 goes. "If a man born blind can feel the differences between shapes such as spheres and cubes, could he, if given the ability, distinguish those objects by sight alone?" In 2003 the riddle was solved when five people had their sight restored though surgery. They could not." | todayilearned |
"TIL firefighters that responded to last year's fire at Notre Dame knew which works of art to rescue and in which order following a protocol developed for such a disaster." | todayilearned |
"TIL that Donald Harvey, a nurse who killed 37 of his patients, was only caught because a medical examiner who performed the autopsy on one of his victims had the genetic ability to smell cyanide. This prompted an investigation and Harvey was discovered." | todayilearned |
"TIL: Street food in Vietnam is so available, fast and cheap that international fast food chains like McDonald’s flopped after entering" | todayilearned |
"TIL a woman in France accidentally received a phone bill of €11,721,000,000,000,000 (million billion). This was 5000x the GDP of France at the time. It took several days of wrangling before the phone company finally admitted it was a mistake and she owed just €117.21. They let her off." | todayilearned |
"TIL that Schizophrenia's hallucinations are shaped by culture. Americans with schizophrenia tend to have more paranoid and harsher voices/hallucinations. In India and Africa people with schizophrenia tend to have more playful and positive voices" | todayilearned |
"TIL It would take 375,000 Lego bricks stacked one on top of another to destroy the bottom brick. The tower would be nearly 12,000 feet tall." | todayilearned |
"TIL: China creates so much synthetic diamonds that are identical to real diamonds that prices of diamonds are being driven down and De Beers has created a university to study how to identify "natural" and "man made" diamonds because no experts can tell the difference." | todayilearned |
"TIL A local fisherman in Costa Rica nursed a crocodile back to health after it had been shot in the head, and released the reptile back to its home. The next day, the man discovered “Pocho” had followed him home and was sleeping on the man’s porch. For 20 years Pocho became part of the man’s family." | todayilearned |
"TIL: Of the United States' 2.9 million female high school athletes, only 3% are cheerleaders, yet cheerleading accounts for nearly 65% of all catastrophic injuries in girls' high school athletics and carries the highest rate of catastrophic injuries in sports." | todayilearned |
"TIL of Jackie Coogan, a child actor in the silent film era who earned millions of dollars, only to find out in his 20s that his parents spent it all on jewelry and cars. He sued and the litigation resulted in the passage of the Coogan Act, which protects child actors" | todayilearned |
"TIL that, in America, before TV was on 24 hours, there was a nightly sign off where the Star Spangled Banner was played and an image of the American flag was shown before the TV cut to static." | todayilearned |
"TIL the food court at Costco makes so much money selling pizza to hungry shoppers, it's ranked as the 14th largest pizza chain in the US - even beating out California Pizza Kitchen, among others" | todayilearned |
"TIL Raven the chimpanzee appeared in the 2009 Guinness World Records book as the most successful chimpanzee on Wall Street after choosing her stocks by throwing darts at a list of 133 internet companies. She became the 22nd most successful money manager in the USA." | todayilearned |
"TIL scientists used 2,000 year old seeds to regrow an extinct species of date tree. The tree long disappeared from the Judean desert but archeologists found seeds on digs. Surprisingly, the seeds worked and grew a male and female of the species. They hope to use them to produce biblical era dates." | todayilearned |
"TIL A Japanese rail company has apologised after a train left a station 25 seconds early. The operator said, "the great inconvenience we placed upon our customers was truly inexcusable"." | todayilearned |
"TIL that Gordon Ramsay has chosen not to give his children a large inheritance, does not take them to expensive restaurants (not even his own), and does not allow them to sit in first class on planes so that they are not spoiled." | todayilearned |
"TIL Andy Samberg won an Emmy for the song “Dick in a Box”" | todayilearned |
"TIL JFK's father Joseph Kennedy made much of his fortune through insider trading. FDR later made him chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. When asked why he appointed a crook, FDR replied, "set a thief to catch a thief." Kennedy proceeded to outlaw the practices that made him rich." | todayilearned |
"TIL that people who experience goosebumps or "shivers" from listening to music tend to experience much stronger emotions in response to music and are more emotional in general. Music tends to be a much more important part of daily life for these people." | todayilearned |
"TIL In 2004 actor Paul Walker secretly purchased a $10,000 engagement ring for a U.S. military veteran. Paul was at a jewelry store & overheard a couple talking about a ring they loved but that was too expensive. Paul quietly put the ring on his tab and walked out of the door." | todayilearned |
"TIL Pornhub has a branch of their network called “Pornhub Cares” where they focus on humanitarian efforts. Some of their causes are breast and testicular cancer research, planting trees, and funding student college scholarships." | todayilearned |
"TIL George Lucas not only gave his blessing to make Spaceballs, he also handed the movie over to his effects company, Industrial Light and Magic, to provide the space effects and postproduction." | todayilearned |
"TIL for the first 40 million years that woody trees were around, wood was not biodegradable...until a fungus figured out how to rot it" | todayilearned |
"TIL Fortnite creator Tim Sweeney is one of the largest landowners in North Carolina and has been buying land for ecologically sustainable purposes since 2008" | todayilearned |
"TIL Bill Gates, since 2007, has given away 48% of his net worth (roughly $28 billion dollars), which has helped save 6 million lives." | todayilearned |
"TIL Nan Britton claimed to have had an affair with US Pres. Warren Harding and gave birth to his daughter. She was ridiculed in court when she tried to sue for child support. In 2015, Ancestry.com confirmed that Britton was telling the truth." | todayilearned |
"TIL prohibition agent Izzy Einstein bragged that he could find liquor in any city in under 30 minutes. In Chicago it took him 21 min. In Atlanta 17, and Pittsburgh just 11. But New Orleans set the record: 35 seconds. Einstein asked his taxi driver where to get a drink, and the driver handed him one." | todayilearned |
"TIL that with only 324 households declaring ownership of a swimming pool on their tax form and fearing tax evasion, Greek authorities turned to satellite imagery for further investigation of Athens' northern suburbs. They discovered a total of 16,974 swimming pools." | todayilearned |
"TIL in 1981 a man named Roger Fischer had an idea for a volunteer to have ICBM launch codes put in their chest cavity. In the event of an emergency, the volunteer would carry a knife to be killed with. It was meant to force the personal killing of one man to start the impersonal killing of millions." | todayilearned |
"TIL that the creators/directors/writers for Parks and Rec, Bob’s Burgers, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Silicon Valley, Modern Family, The Good Place, American Dad, and Rick and Morty all got their big breaks on King of the Hill" | todayilearned |
"TIL a New York deaf man sued Pornhub for not providing closed captioning to all of their videos. Despite Pornhub's VP asserting that they do have a closed captions video section, the man's lawsuit specifically cites “Hot Step Aunt Babysits Disobedient Nephew" as a video that lacked closed captions." | todayilearned |
"TIL that acacias, the trees whose leaves are eaten by giraffes, release an airborne chemical called ethylene. Ethylene alerts nearby acacia trees to produce tannin, a toxin that makes the leaves poisonous, and lethal if over-consumed. Giraffes try avoiding this by eating trees downwind from another." | todayilearned |
"TIL marine biologist, Stephen Hillenburg, created an educational comic book about tide pool animals called "The Intertidal Zone" to help educate his students. In later years after becoming an animator he began developing those same characters and concepts for what became "SpongeBob Squarepants."" | todayilearned |
"TIL someone translated Dracula into Icelandic and it took over 100 years for anyone to point out he just made a fanfic-rewrite of what he wanted the story to be." | todayilearned |
"TIL Viggo Mortensen would not have taken the part of Aragorn in LOTR had it not been for his 11 year old son's enthusiasm for the books. He performed his own stunts insisting he used a real steel sword and he also purchased the two horses, whom he rode and bonded with over the duration of the films." | todayilearned |
"TIL in the 1880s, many farmers communicated by connecting their phones to barbed wire fences. This process often allowed for up to 20 people to be connected at once, everyone’s phone would ring regardless of who called, and the invention helped many farmers overcome depression and loneliness." | todayilearned |
"TIL that one of the main engineers behind NASA's Challenger rocket, which exploded in 1986, revealed that after NASA would not heed his warnings against launching in the cold weather, he told his wife the night before the launch, "It's going to blow up."" | todayilearned |
"TIL there is no antivenom for a blue-ringed octopus bite. However, if you can get a ventilator to breathe for you for 15 hours, you survive with no side effects." | todayilearned |
"TIL upon hearing about the death of Teddy Roosevelt, Vice President Thomas R. Marshal declared “death had to take him in his sleep, for if he was awake there’d have been a fight”" | todayilearned |
"TIL Queen Elizabeth once went for a walk near her Balmoral estate with one of her protection officers and met some American tourists who didn’t recognise her. They asked her if she’d ever met the Queen and she said “No”, then pointed to her officer and said “he has”. They didn’t connect the dots." | todayilearned |
"TIL Wayne Gretzky's stats were so far ahead of his peers' that if you cut his entire career number in half he's still one of the top 20 players of all time." | todayilearned |
"TIL that in the operatic song in The Fifth Element, composer Eric Sierra "purposely wrote un-singable things" so she’d sound like an alien. When opera singer Inva Muls came for the part, "she sang 85% of what thought was technically impossible", the rest being assembled in the studio." | todayilearned |
"TIL Adam West and Frank Gorshin were kicked out of an orgy because they were were determined to stay in-character as Batman and the Riddler." | todayilearned |
"TIL Casey Anthony had “fool-proof suffocation methods” in her Firefox search history from the day before her daughter died. Police overlooked this evidence, because they only checked the history in Internet Explorer." | todayilearned |
"TIL that koalas have one of the smallest brains in proportion to body weight of any mammal. They are so dumb, that when presented with leaves on a flat surface instead of on branches, they are unable to recognize them as food and will not eat them." | todayilearned |
"TIL Bob Marley gave a credit on "No Woman, No Cry" to one of his friends who ran a soup kitchen, to ensure the royalty checks would keep it open." | todayilearned |
"TIL that Ted Kaczynski (better known as the Unabomber) received an invitation in 2012, while incarcerated at ADX Florence, to his Harvard graduating class's 50th anniversary reunion. He RSVPed, noting his occupation as "prisoner" and his eight life sentences as "awards."" | todayilearned |
"TIL the pet food company Chewy sends flowers and a card when a customer's pet dies. They will reimburse the purchase of unopened food and suggest it be donated to a shelter. They also offer the option of talking to someone about the grief of losing a pet." | todayilearned |
"TIL about the Rosenhan experiment, in which a Stanford psychologist and his associates faked hallucinations in order to be admitted to psychiatric hospitals. They then acted normally. All were forced to admit to having a mental illness and agree to take antipsychotic drugs in order to be released." | todayilearned |
"TIL that the philosopher William James experienced great depression due to the notion that free will is an illusion. He brought himself out of it by realizing, since nobody seemed able to prove whether it was real or not, that he could simply choose to believe it was." | todayilearned |
"TIL an elderly man gained the trust of a Belgian bank by bringing the workers chocolates. He was eventually given VIP access to the bank vault. In 2007, he stole $28 million worth of diamonds and vanished." | todayilearned |
"TIL in 2014, four tenants refused to move out of their homes when developers wanted to create one of the most exclusive residences in Manhattan. Eventually, they all received huge payouts. The last tenant was so savvy and stubborn he received $17 million, plus use of a $2 million residence for life." | todayilearned |
"TIL Vitaminwater is basically sugar-water, to which about a penny's worth of synthetic vitamins have been added. A bottle of vitaminwater contains 33 grams of sugar, making it more akin to a soft drink than to a healthy beverage" | todayilearned |
"TIL In 2019, a hipster complained to MIT Technology Review for using his picture to imply hipsters look the same, end up discovering the picture was of an entirely different hipster" | todayilearned |
"TIL that Psy initially refused to upload "Gangnam Style" to Youtube, saying that he would be "humiliated" because he didn't have any international fans." | todayilearned |
"TIL Tomatoes are native to the Americas, so there was no such thing as tomato sauce in Italy until at least the 16th century." | todayilearned |
"TIL: The oldest bar in the world is in Ireland. Archeological records have found that the walls of Sean’s Bar have been around, and serving, since 900 AD. Further, there are records of every owner of the pub back to its 10th century founding. It opened over 1100 years ago." | todayilearned |
"TIL a Canadian man getting a rectal exam by his doctor at a hospital was observed by people he assumed were medical practitioners/med students. He sued the hospital and observers after learning the observers were two actors who play doctors on TV doing research for the TV series "Saving Hope."" | todayilearned |
"TIL magnolia plants are so ancient that they're pollinated by beetles because they existed prior to bees appearing" | todayilearned |
"TIL two trapped miners once asked for an ipod with The Foo Fighters music on it to keep their spirits up. After hearing this, Dave Grohl wrote a note saying "I want you to know that when you come home, there's two tickets to any Foos show, anywhere, and two cold beers waiting for you"." | todayilearned |
"TIL Steve Jobs believed that his commitment to vegan diets meant his body was flushed of mucus and he was free from body odor, so he didn't need to wear deodorant or shower regularly. His former coworkers quote that he was 'very, very wrong'" | todayilearned |
"TIL: In 2007 a thief drove a $280,000 Porsche through the glass window of a Malaysian luxury car showroom. The car was abandoned nearby, its fuel tank empty. The thief kept the keys and returned with a can of gas to the police station where the car was impounded, stealing the vehicle a second time." | todayilearned |
"TIL L. Ron. Hubbard’s own son, L. Ron Hubbard Jr. was highly critical of Scientology and claimed black magic was the inner core of Scientology once stating, "my father did not worship Satan. He thought he was Satan."" | todayilearned |
"TIL The original word for 'bear' has been lost. People in middle ages were superstitious and thought saying the animal's name would summon it. They called it 'bear' which means 'the brown one' to avoid saying its actual name." | todayilearned |
"TIL that Steven Spielberg wanted to direct a James Bond film but was turned down by Eon Productions. When he told this to George Lucas, Lucas said he had a film that was just like it but even better. The story was about an archaeologist named Indiana." | todayilearned |
"TIL that Alaska, Hawaii, Maine and Vermont have banned billboard advertising." | todayilearned |
"TIL that someone in New York state bought an old bowl at a tag sale in 2007 for $3. When the buyer had it appraised several years later, they learned it was a 1,000-year-old Chinese bowl initially valued at $200,000 to $300,000. It later sold at auction for $2.2 million." | todayilearned |
"TIL that in Moscow, packs of stray dogs will sometimes send out a smaller, cuter member to beg for food, apparently realising it will be more successful than its bigger, less attractive counterparts" | todayilearned |
"TIL that a British bomb detection dog named Theo died from stress a few hours after seeing his handler get shot. The pair had set a record for bomb detection, and the dog was posthumously awarded an honour equivalent to the Victoria Cross." | todayilearned |
"TIL in 1998, Alex Trebek donated of 74 acres of open land (worth $2m at the time) in Los Angeles' Hollywood Hills for the purpose of conservation and as a wildlife corridor" | todayilearned |
"TIL at G.E. in the 1920s, as a joke, newly hired engineers would be told to develop an inside frosted lightbulb, which was believed to be impossible. In 1925, newly hired Marvin Pipkin got the assignment, and astonished his peers by succeeding." | todayilearned |
"TIL that while filming "Star Wars: The Force Awakens", actor Oscar Isaac specifically requested that his character Poe Dameron be a native of the planet Yavin 4. This is because the scenes on Yavin 4 in the original trilogy were filmed in Guatemala, where Isaac is actually from." | todayilearned |
"TIL during the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russians made a small "mouse" hole into a secure anti-doping lab and exchanged "clean" urine samples for those showing their athletes' PED use. Over 100 dirty samples were smuggled out by a Russian agent pretending to be a sewer engineer." | todayilearned |
"TIL "All Star" by Smash Mouth was written with the intention of being an upbeat, self-confidence building song for fans who were being bullied for liking Smash Mouth" | todayilearned |
"TIL Captain America #1, with its iconic cover of Cap punching Hitler, came out a year before the US entered WWII. At the time most people did not support war with Germany, so Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, both Jews, received death threats. However, the Mayor of New York was a fan and pledged protection." | todayilearned |
"TIL that 30 years ago you had 15-17 minutes to escape a house fire. Nowadays you only have 3-5 minutes (due to more plastics & petroleum-based products in the house as well as more open floor plans, bigger rooms, & higher ceilings)." | todayilearned |
"TIL 4 teens with vaginal aplasia (born with no vagina) received vagina implants grown in a lab using their own vulva tissue biopsies & pelvic scans. Later, all reported normal arousal, lubrication, intercourse, orgasm; 2 women were able to have the vagina connected to the uterus for reproduction." | todayilearned |
"TIL that the north star is 4000 times brighter than our sun. The light we see when we look at the north star was generated in the year 1587, and it has been traveling through space for 434 years to reach us." | todayilearned |
"TIL: Robin Williams autopsy revealed he had about 40% loss of dopamine neurons and almost no neurons were free of Lewy bodies throughout his entire brain and brainstem from Lewy body disease (LBD)" | todayilearned |
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