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"TIL a man from New Zealand memorized every french word in the french scrabble dictionary and won the French Scrabble Championship. He still doesn't speak any french." | todayilearned |
"TIL members of Lewis & Clark's expedition took mercury-bearing pills to "treat" constipation and other conditions, and thus left mercury deposits wherever they dug their latrines. These mercury signals have been used to pinpoint some of the 600 camps on the voyage." | todayilearned |
"TIL that cigarette butts are environmentally toxic and the most littered item in the world" | todayilearned |
"TIL that 80% of toilets in Hong Kong are flushed with seawater in order to conserve the city's scarce freshwater resources" | todayilearned |
"TIL it is illegal under German law to deny the holocaust, which is punishable by up to 5 years in prison." | todayilearned |
"TIL: In 1666, the plague-infested village of Eyam quarantined itself inside a marked circle for 14 months. Neighboring communities left food at the edge of the circle in exchange for disinfected coins. 80% of the people died, but no one crossed the circle." | todayilearned |
"TIL the US Navy replaced expensive and clunky periscope controls on submarines with Xbox 360 controllers, which reduced training time from hours to minutes" | todayilearned |
"TIL that a supermarket was closed down so that Michael Jackson could fulfill his dream to go to a supermarket and shop like everybody else and experience what it was like to “put things in a basket.” It was populated with his friends and family pretending to be fellow shoppers and employees." | todayilearned |
"TIL that, in 1954, Betty White was criticized for having Arthur Duncan, a black performer, on her show. When the show went national, affiliates from southern states complained and Betty said "I'm sorry. Live with it" and gave Duncan more airtime. The show was soon cancelled." | todayilearned |
"TIL: During WW2 black U.S soldiers stationed in England were drinking in a pub with local people when U.S Military police arrived to stop them getting served and arrest them for not segregating. The white local people in the pub defended the black men, which eventually led to a riot and gunshots." | todayilearned |
"TIL that Donnie Dunagan, a retired United States Marine Corps drill instructor, managed to keep secret - throughout his entire career - that he was a voice actor in the Walt Disney's Bambi film, providing the voice of young Bambi." | todayilearned |
"TIL that Ebbie Tolbert was born in around 1807 and spent over 50 years as a slave. She gained her freedom at age 56. And lived long enough that at age 113 she walked to the St Louis polling station and registered to vote." | todayilearned |
"TIL: A hijacked Ethiopian Airlines plane was headed to Switzerland, but had to be intercepted by French/Italian fighter jets because the Swiss Air force doesn't work on nights and weekends." | todayilearned |
"TIL Chris Evans turned down the Captain America role multiple times because of Anxiety, fear of a 10-movie commitment and the public spotlight. He went to therapy before taking the role" | todayilearned |
"TIL Native Americans used controlled fires to manage the land. These prescribed burns decreased the impact/frequency of damaging wildfires, boosted agricultural production, helped with hunting, and reduced tick populations." | todayilearned |
"TIL that "on January 13, 1958, Klansmen burned a cross on the lawn of a Lumbee American Indian woman in the town of St. Pauls, North Carolina as "a warning" because she was dating a white man." At their next rally, a group of 500 armed Lumbee encircled the klansmen and opened fire." | todayilearned |
"TIL a legally blind hoarder whose son had not been seen for 20 years was found to have been living with his corpse. His fully clothed skeleton was found in a room filled with cobwebs and garbage, and she reported thinking that he had simply moved out." | todayilearned |
"TIL that a small town in West Virginia asked the Soviet Union and East Germany for help with replacing a bridge after being ignored by the West Virginian goverment. The Soviets sent a journalist to investigate and within one hour the state finally agreed to pay for it." | todayilearned |
"TIL that when a bee hive becomes too full, bees will form a "Senate" comprised of older, more experienced bees to seek a new location. When a bee finds a good spot, it begins dancing to motion other bees toward it. Then, they vote on it by dancing as a collective until a consensus is reached." | todayilearned |
"TIL Author Robert Howard created Conan the Barbarian and invented the entire 'sword and sorcery' genre. He took care of his sickly mother his entire adult life, never married and barely dated. The day his mother finally died, he he walked out to his car, grabbed a gun, and shot himself in the head." | todayilearned |
"TIL a rodent that was believed to be extinct for 113 years casually showed up on the handrail at the front porch of an ecolodge in Colombia and let researchers photograph it for two hours before disappearing into the night, after which it was never seen again" | todayilearned |
"TIL about environmental activist Julia “Butterfly” Hill who lived in a 1500 year old California redwood tree (known as Luna) 180 feet (55 mm) off the ground for 738 days in order to prevent it from being chopped down by Pacific Lumber Company. She successfully saved the tree." | todayilearned |
"TIL of Dipprasad Pun, a Nepalese soldier during the War of Afghanistan who was attacked by 30 insurgents. Believing he was about to die, he expended all 400 rounds of his ammunition, launched 17 grenades, detonated a Claymore mine, and killed an attacker with his tripod, causing them to retreat." | todayilearned |
"TIL that Sweden is actually increasing forest biomass despite being the second largest exporter of paper in the world because they plant 3 trees for each 1 they cut down" | todayilearned |
"TIL After being shot by poachers, an Elephant in Zimbabwe named Ben walked to and patiently waited outside a medical lodge for 5 hours." | todayilearned |
"TIL Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop sold "bio-frequency stickers" made of the "carbon material NASA uses to line space suits" they claimed would "rebalance the energy frequency in our bodies." When alerted to the product, NASA said their spacesuits weren’t even lined with carbon material." | todayilearned |
"TIL the guard of the tomb of the unknown solider does not wear any rank insignias so as to not outrank any of the "unknown" soldiers." | todayilearned |
"TIL United Airlines has repeatedly killed more pets per year than any other US airline." | todayilearned |
"TIL Queen Elizabeth has met 12 US presidents during her reign. Which is over a quarter of all presidents since the United States' inception." | todayilearned |
"TIL in 1998, a 10-year-old girl in Austria was dragged into a car and kidnapped. The case remained unsolved until she knocked on someone's door in 2006 saying: "I am Natascha Kampusch." She had just escaped the secret cellar of a local technician that abused her for 8 years." | todayilearned |
"TIL Actor Kevin Bacon pays off DJ’s when he attends weddings so that they won’t play “Footloose.”" | todayilearned |
"TIL black people in ancient Rome were not discriminated against because of their skin colour or physical features. They were not excluded from any profession and there was no stigma against mixed race relationships. Classical writers did not attach social status or degree of humanity to skin colour." | todayilearned |
"TIL during the filming of Matilda, Danny Devito and Rhea Perlman; who played Matilda's parents; would take Mara Wilson on outings with their family to help the actress cope with her mother's battle, and eventual death, from cancer." | todayilearned |
"TIL in 2013, Australian blogger Belle Gibson claimed to have beaten brain cancer using 'natural remedies' — selling a cookbook to cancer patients with all her 'secrets'. It was later revealed she never even had cancer, and was fined $410,000 by the Australian government for her deceptive practices." | todayilearned |
"TIL shortly after returning from the moon Buzz Aldrin began to suffer from alcoholism and depression. "I wanted to resume my duties, but there were no duties to resume. There was no goal, no sense of calling, no project worth pouring myself into."" | todayilearned |
"TIL that the US $2 bill is still being produced in large numbers. The apparent scarcity of the bill is caused by collectors taking it out of circulation because they think that it is rarer than it actually is." | todayilearned |
"TIL of Endal the service dog. After Endal's owner was knocked out of a wheelchair by a passing car, Endal put him in the recovery position, covered him with a blanket from his wheelchair, retrieved his phone from under the car, and went into a nearby hotel to get help." | todayilearned |
"TIL of the Shirky Principle: "Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution."" | todayilearned |
"TIL Coca-Cola was sued by a consumer protection agency for misleading health claims regarding VitaminWater, which contains 33 grams of sugar per bottle. Coca-Cola's defense was that "no consumer could reasonably be misled into thinking VitaminWater was a healthy beverage.”" | todayilearned |
"TIL about Keith Cutler, a judge summoned to be a juror on a case he was presiding over. When he applied to be excused from jury service he was initially declined, and was told to write to the resident judge, to which he replied: "I am the resident judge."" | todayilearned |
"TIL many people believed Abraham Lincoln was ugly, including himself. Once, when he was accused of being “two-faced” during a debate, he replied, “If I had two faces, would I be showing you this one?”" | todayilearned |
"TIL Tim Curry, a lifelong Scooby-Doo fan, was offered the villain role in the 2002 Scooby-Doo movie, but turned it down after learning the film would include Scrappy-Doo, a character he disliked." | todayilearned |
"TIL after a Black female postmaster was wrongly pressured out of her post in Mississippi in 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt continued to pay her federal salary and punished the town by rerouting their mail to Greenville, 30 miles away" | todayilearned |
"TIL that Outback Steakhouse was founded in Tampa, FL by four Americans who had never visited Australia. They simply saw an opportunity to ride the wave of popularity of all things Australian following the 1986 film Crocodile Dundee. Their concept was “American food and Australian fun.”" | todayilearned |
"TIL that the depictions of the mafia in The Sopranos were so accurate, that real members thought that they were being spied on. These conversations were overheard, when the FBI were indeed spying on them." | todayilearned |
"TIL when Beethoven first performed his Ninth Symphony, as he couldn’t hear the rapturous applause it received due to his deafness, one of his singers approached him and turned him around so that he could see the standing ovation he was receiving." | todayilearned |
"TIL Abercrombie & Fitch offered the cast of Jersey Shore "substantial payment" to stop wearing their brand" | todayilearned |
"TIL that a 1996 federal law allows restaurants to donate leftover food without getting sued, and that nobody has ever filed a lawsuit against a restaurant over donated leftovers" | todayilearned |
"TIL Marie Antoinette built an entire fake village, complete with a working farm and fake villagers, in the backyard of Chateau de Versailles, so she could pretend to be a "peasant" whenever she felt like it." | todayilearned |
"TIL that the first anti-hacking law was passed after President Reagan saw the movie War Games and asked his staff if this could happen. A week later the response was “Mr. President, the problem is much worse than you think.”" | todayilearned |
"TIL in 1998, Disney helped create a copyright law that made sure no movies from 1923 became free to watch and distribute for 20 more years. This copyright law expires on January 1, 2019." | todayilearned |
"TIL when Apple was building a massive data center in rural North Carolina, a couple who had lived there for 34 years refused to sell their house and plot of land worth $181,700. After making countless offers, Apple eventually paid them $1.7 million to leave." | todayilearned |
"TIL Viggo Mortensen purchased the horse he rode in "Lord of The Rings." The horse had a hard time adjusting to the lights and sounds on set and it took a while for them to get in sync. "We got through it together and became friends. I wanted to stay in touch with him," said Viggo." | todayilearned |
"TIL of Don Shipley, a retired Navy Seal who has spent much of his post service life exposing individuals who falsely claim to be SEALs. According to the FBI there are 300 times more impostor Navy SEALs than actual SEALs" | todayilearned |
"TIL The mother of a sick baby asked Ronaldo for an autographed shirt so she could sell it for the baby's treatment. He sent her a signed shirt and cheque for $83,000." | todayilearned |
"TIL - The inventor of the USB had originally intended for it to be flippable, however that idea was scrapped due to the extra cost. Despite USB becoming the standard, he still regrets that decision. "In hindsight, we blew it," he said." | todayilearned |
"TIL in 1990, First Lady Barbara Bush criticized The Simpsons as “the dumbest thing I've ever seen." Marge wrote a letter to her, in character, politely telling her not to be so judgmental and explaining that her family tried their best. Mrs Bush later apologized for her “loose tongue”" | todayilearned |
"TIL Bhutan is the world's only carbon negative country. The constitution demands at least 60% of the country covered in forest, making it a sink of over four million tonnes of CO2 per year." | todayilearned |
"TIL Nicaraguan Sign Language is a sign language that spontaneously developed among deaf children in Nicaragua in the 1980s. It is of particular interest to linguists because it is believed to be to be an example of the birth of a new language, unrelated to any other." | todayilearned |
"TIL that while in Sharon Springs, Theodore Roosevelt was approached by a 12-year-old girl who asked if he would like to have a badger. Expecting to humor her, he agreed, and the girl came back with a 2-week-old badger. President Roosevelt named him Josiah and he became one of the presidential pets." | todayilearned |
"TIL that when J.R.R. Tolkien's son Michael signed up for the British army, he listed his father's occupation as "Wizard"" | todayilearned |
"TIL a pod of dolphins saved a group of swimmers from a great white shark by herding the swimmers together and doing tight circles around them to create a barrier. The dolphins kept this up for 40 minutes until the shark lost interest and was safe for the swimmers to swim to shore." | todayilearned |
"TIL Mike Tyson's workout involved getting up at 4am for a 5-mile jog. Then he would do (cumulatively) 2000 sit-ups, 500 pushups, 500 dips, 500 shrugs and about 30 minutes of neck bridges daily. He repeated this 6 days a week." | todayilearned |
"TIL in 2009, a 14-year-old boy showed up at a Chicago police station in uniform and worked 5 hours of a shift. He allegedly got a police radio, ticket book and rode with an officer for several hours before his identity was realised. He knew procedure due to a "police explorer" program he’d gone to." | todayilearned |
"TIL Former US President Andrew Jackson was approached by a man who pulled a gun on him.The man pulled the trigger and shot at him but misfired, he then took another gun out of his pocket and and pulled the trigger but that gun also misfired.Jackson who was 67 at that time then beat him with his cane" | todayilearned |
"TIL poison dart frogs are actually harmless when kept in captivity. In the wild, they only develop poison because they eat mostly ants, and the ants themselves ingest different varieties of poisonous plants." | todayilearned |
"TIL Alien’s entire cast including Sigourney Weaver was originally just genderless last names, and they then picked the best person for each character, then chose a first name for them" | todayilearned |
"TIL that Ernie Hudson, who played Winston Zeddmore in Ghostbusters, auditioned for the same charracter in the animated series two years later, but didnt get the part because they didn't think he sounded enough like Winston from the movie." | todayilearned |
"TIL Clint Eastwood was mayor of tiny Carmel-by-the-Sea, CA in the 1980s; he ran because he wanted to lift a ban on public ice cream sales, flew home from movie sets for weekly council meetings, wrote a column in the town paper, and a local hotel changed their slogan to "make my stay"." | todayilearned |
"TIL that Saturns’ rings are, cosmically speaking, a very brief event. We are about halfway through their 200 million year lifespan and are very lucky as a species to be alive to witness them. “Some velociraptor with a telescope looking at Saturn would not have seen rings.”" | todayilearned |
"TIL that in response to fans demanding the show Metalpocalipse be continued, Adult Swim set up a live stream of the a fax machine printing the petition to bring back the show… only for the faxes to be dropped straight into a trash bin." | todayilearned |
"TIL that Lebron James rejected a $10 million offer from Reebok when he was just 18. When asked why, he said that Nike or Adidas might offer him a bit more. Less than a year later, he accepted a $90 million offer from Nike." | todayilearned |
"TIL: A retired man robbed a bank and wait for police, using a note saying he'd rather be in jail than with his wife. He was sentenced to home confinement." | todayilearned |
"TIL A 19 yr old pizza delivery guy helped save a man's life by performing CPR on the customer who was turning blue outside the house. He said, "I left a pizza boy and came back a pizza man." His tip was 25 bucks." | todayilearned |
"TIL Iron Man was created by Stan Lee as a challenge to create a hero no one should like and force people to like him" | todayilearned |
"TIL Robert Millikan disliked Einstein's results about light consisting of particles (photons) and carefully designed experiments to disprove them, but ended up confirming the particle nature of light, and earned a Nobel Prize for that." | todayilearned |
"TIL There is a phenomenon where millions of people in Britain all simultaneously turn on their electric kettles during commercial TV breaks causing massive power surges countrywide." | todayilearned |
"TIL that when Henry Ford doubled the pay of his auto workers from $2.50 per day to $5, he didn't do it for altruistic reasons. His factory had one of the highest turnover rates (due to danger of the assembly line and tedium of the work). After the raises, it dropped to the lowest." | todayilearned |
"TIL that Billie Joe Armstrong once dropkicked a guy in the middle of a Green Day concert after he saw him roughing up a young girl. He stopped the show and challenged him to a fight before jumping into the crowd." | todayilearned |
"TIL The town of Dull in Scotland has been twinned with the town of Boring, Oregon since 2012. In 2013 the town of Bland, Australia joined them in what has become known as the 'Trinity of Tedium'." | todayilearned |
"TIL that photographer Carol Highsmith donated tens of thousands of her photos to the Library of Congress, making them free for public use. Getty Images later claimed copyright on many of these photos, then accused her of copyright infringement by using one of her own photos on her own site." | todayilearned |
"TIL that when Bill Watterson turned down the opportunity to license and merchandise “Calvin and Hobbes,” it was estimated that he was turning down $300-400 million to maintain the integrity and purity of the comic." | todayilearned |
"TIL that Neil Armstrong's barber sold Armstrong's hair for $3k without his consent. Armstrong threatened to sue the barber unless he either returned the hair or or donated the proceeds to charity. Unable to retrieve the hair, the barber donated the $3k to a charity of Armstrong's choosing." | todayilearned |
"TIL in California all DUI convicts are made to sign “The Watson Admonishment”, which forces them to acknowledge the danger of DUI. If you are the cause of fatal DUI after signing this you are charged with murder rather than manslaughter." | todayilearned |
"TIL that the reason Sherlock Holmes adaptations portray him as cold and unemotional is because later stories where he has empathy and warmth are owned by the Conan Doyle Estate. They will sue if a depiction of Holmes uses character traits that they own the rights to." | todayilearned |
"TIL the so-called 'Autism Epidemic' isn't an epidemic at all but rather an increase in reported incidents due to a growing awareness of autism and changes to the condition’s diagnostic criteria." | todayilearned |
"TIL if you get a zebrafish drunk and put it in a tank of sober zebrafish, the sober fish will adopt it as their leader and follow the drunk fish around the tank." | todayilearned |
"TIL Edgar Allen Poe died mysteriously after having been missing for six days. Though still alive when he was finally found, he was wearing someone else’s cheap clothes and not coherent enough to tell where he’d been. He had disappeared en route to his own wedding." | todayilearned |
"TIL Salvador Dali once conned Yoko Ono into paying $10,000 for a single blade of grass. Yoko had offered to pay that amount for one of his mustache hairs. He substituted the blade of grass because he thought that Yoko Ono was a witch and might use his hair in a spell." | todayilearned |
"TIL British Parliament had an official discussion where they condemned the historical inaccuracies of the film U-571 and the rewriting of history to paint the Americans as heroes in an event they never even took part in. They felt it was unfair on the British sailors that lost their lives." | todayilearned |
"TIL about Peter principle that states if a person is competent at their job, it will get promoted until the person is incompetent at his new role. Then they remain stuck at that final level for the rest of their career. Therefore, in time, every post tends to be occupied by an incompetent employee." | todayilearned |
"TIL that when future US President Lyndon B. Johnson was Senate majority leader, he instructed his staff to make his scotch and soda significantly weaker than his guest’s, so that he could keep a clearer head" | todayilearned |
"TIL Pat Sajak and Vanna White work only 36 days per year. They work 4 days per month for 9 months, filming six episodes of Wheel of Fortune from 12 noon to 6pm. It amounts to a full year’s worth of programming for ABC." | todayilearned |
"TIL Medal of Honor recipient Edward Carter could speak five languages, fought in his first war at 15, and joined the the Spanish Civil War to fight fascists at 20 before eventually fighting in WW2. Despite his heroism in combat, he and all other black awardees would not be recognized until 1997." | todayilearned |
"TIL that anyone who moves to Villas Las Estrellas, a settlement in Antarctica, must first have their appendix preemptively removed because the nearest hospital is over 600 miles away." | todayilearned |
"TIL when deaf people with schizophrenia 'hear voices', they hallucinate hands communicating using sign language" | todayilearned |
"TIL a man who was paralyzed from a surfing accident neck injury was able to walk again from an experimental treatment. Stem cells from the man's own stomach fat were injected into his spinal cord to regenerate and repair the injury." | todayilearned |
"TIL that Christopher Walken is one of only two actors (the other being Alec Baldwin) to have a standing offer from Lorne Michaels to host Saturday Night Live whenever his schedule permits. Thus far he has hosted the show 7 times, his most famous appearance being the "More Cowbell!" sketch." | todayilearned |
"TIL A 3M adhesive tape plant accidentally created a force field of static electricity that was strong enough to prevent humans from passing through. A person near this "wall" was unable to turn, and so had to walk backwards to retreat from it." | todayilearned |
"TIL Shrek was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant"" | todayilearned |
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