46 ‘Today I Learned’ Facts That May Come In Clutch When Conversation Runs Dry (New Facts)
September is the perfect time to learn something new. Why, you ask? Well, the start of a new academic year often motivates people to broaden their knowledge even if eons have passed since they set foot into an educational institution.
Taking advantage of this opportunity, our Bored Panda team has scoured the ‘Today I Learned’ community to bring you some of the most fascinating facts you can learn. Scroll down to find them below, and don’t forget to upvote those that you enjoyed learning the most.
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TIL that during WWII, the French carmaker Citroen was forced to make vehicles for German forces. The president of Citroen, Pierre-Jules Boulanger, first sabotaged this by slowing workers. He then redesigned the dipstick to show there was plenty of oil, leading to frequent breakdowns.
The two people who made most fun of the French during WWII - USA and UK - are now the ones who bow deepest to fascists and lick their boots. Saying this from the UK, in case you're wondering.
Earonn: wash your mouth out. You're talking nonsense. The UK remains overwhelmingly anti-fáscist. Britain fought alongside the French to defend France against the German invasion - and lost. Britain (and the US, and Canada - and so many others, including Poles and Czechs and Indians and Kiwis and... the list is very long) fought to free Europe from N@zi Germany. Admittedly, Brits were making fun of the French all along, but then again we were taking the mickey out of absolutely everyone including ourselves. It's only the Yanks - and only in recent years - that have gone for the "cheese eating surrender monkey" nonsense about the French. You want to know how hard the French can fight? Read this - and weep - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Verdun
Load More Replies...I have the impression that they continue to do this. Citroen is famous for breakdowns
Made by the other type of dіpstіck.
Load More Replies...Threatening the bottom line of whoever is really the easiest way to see change. Disney's stock dropped 7% during the Jimmy Kimmel suspended thing and he was back on the air in a week.
Load More Replies...French automakers didn’t need to sabotage their cars. The designs were sabotage enough.
The Citroen was the leader of all modern luxury cars. Cadillac beat out Rolls in 1903. And the 1957 Eldorado defeated the RR of the year, and sealled the doom of all the Automakers you never knew existed
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TIL a Canadian engineer once built a Mjölnir replica that only the "worthy" could lift: it sensed the iron ring commonly worn by Canadian engineers (presented in a ceremony called the Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer), triggering an electromagnetic release so ring-wearers could pick it up.
And now we know why King Arthur could pull that sword from the stone. I think I remember Bugs Bunny doing it also. So the (time-traveling) Canadian engineers were behind it all!.
It's always those dámn time-travelling Canucks
Load More Replies...TIL this is a Canadian ritual. I've met many men and women who have the ring. I've heard that the rings are (now?) made with steel and iron salvaged from the Tacoma Narrows Bridge disaster.
I also did not know this was a Canadian thing. My buddy has his ring and I tell him to wear it with pride.
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TIL that people who experience "vicarioius embarassment" (feeling embarrased just observing someone else in an embarassing situation) have the same physical reactions in their nervous system as if they are the subject of the embarassing situation
Same here. I also can't watch reality TV and influencers on social media. I think this is a win for me. I also feel those "funny" videos in the pit of my stomach where someone hurts themselves by falling or bumping into something.
Load More Replies...In Finland, "myötähäpeä", it is a commonly used (and needed!) word.
Load More Replies...I have this sooooo badly. There are many tv programs that I cannot watch, because I get stuck at a cringy moment and keep postponing watching it. Especially "reality" shows. Standup comedy too, when the comedian asks an audience member a question, I get so uncomfortable that the person might embarrass themselves, I can't look.
Is The Office one of those shows? For the life of me I cannot bring myself to watch more than a few minutes of it. I am aware of how successful it is. On the other hand I enjoyed Parks & Recreation immensely.
Load More Replies...Not me, but my boyfriend does and he either hides behind a cushion or have to leave the room altogether!
Load More Replies...Oh yes. It's physically painful. Do not understand how anyone can enjoy watching someone embarrass themselves.
TIL 17-year-old female pitcher Jackie Mitchell struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in succession during an exhibition match. As a consequence, the baseball commisioner terminated her contract and Ruth later trash talked about women in baseball to a newspaper.
So, the contract was not "terminated" days later, it expired after being extended explicitly to allow her to perform the stunt during the Yankees match. It was an organized publicity stunt, with Gehrig and Ruth *playing along in a scripted routine* designed to inspire women and make headlines. The players' reaction was also scripted to be in character (flamboyant for Ruth, humorous for Gehrig). She went on playing baseball in exhibition matches, some real some scripted stunts, until she grew bored and feeling humiliated by the ever increasing gimmicks her promoters organized, and she retired to take over her family business.
The opening article should have referenced this otherwise it is just click bait
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TIL In 1945 the adult literacy rate in South Korea was estimated at 22%. In 1970, adult literacy was 87.6%. By the late 1980s, sources estimated it at around 93%.
Twenty years ago, Publishers Weekly stated that after high school, the average American male never read another book. Twenty years later, (and with the advent of the smart phone) and so much electronic media, that figure has likely not increased. Hence our literacy rate's decline. Reading will always be the backbone of intelligence.
From AI - Socrates was critical of reading because he believed written texts could foster intellectual laziness, weaken memory, and lead to a superficial understanding of knowledge, as they lacked the dynamic, interactive nature of spoken dialogue.
Load More Replies...The "Han River Miracle" (the rapid industrialization and growth of South Korea) came with a swath of dark sides, though. In the 1960s and 1970s it was normal to have 16-hours working days in textile and electronics factories, zero workers' health and safety mandates, child labor was widespread; unions were suppressed and police used an heavy hand against anyone asking for social reform. The police and army were routinely employed against students and workers, with t*rture being a common tool for inquiry and repression. All the largest Korean industrial conglomerates rose to power in those years thanks to government connections if not unabashed corruption. Women in the workforce were in conditions that were even worse than those of the English Industrial Revolution, they were paid a pittance and subject to degrading conditions.
Cities were surrounded by slums, inhabited by former farmhands that moved to the new factories; local government could not keep up with sanitation and services, constructions were shoddy and dangerous, leading to third-world living conditions that remained well until the 1980s. Severe pollution caused long-term damage to large part of the country, and there were many cases of industrial chemical contamination of whole cities and their populations. The '88 Olympics were the first catalyst for a general improvement on those issues.
Load More Replies...North Korea on the other hand has almost 100% literacy, same as Cuba; isn't it weird that USA citizens are uneducated morons despite living in the richest country of the world?
Load More Replies...How is that surprising? Not much different than in most asian countries in that timeframe. What would be an interresting fact would be that the literacy rate in north korea was higher until the middle 70s 😉
Geobugi🇰🇷🇰🇭: a more interesting thing is that there's been no accurate information about North Korea's population released to the outside world since partition in 1945 - so, er? Where do you think you're getting your information from? 🤨
Load More Replies...If they work hard they could get to levels achieved by Cuba despite the illegal economic warfare waved by the USA against them.
It was more of a case of an authoritarian military dictatorship ruthlessly implementing a program that can be summed up as "Economy first, democracy later (maybe)". It took a bunch of dead activists, egregious protests (people self-immolating in fires and such) and a lot of clandestine organization among workers and students to finally start a turn toward social-democratic policies. The spark was a military mass*cre of peaceful middle class protesters in Gwangju, leaving 250 dead and 3000 injured, along with Western pressure for implementation of human rights on the threat of commercial sanctions and a national strike to call for free elections.
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TIL Wes Anderson uses a flat-fee salary system in which the actors that appear in his films are all paid the same rate. He began this practice on Rushmore after Bill Murray offered to take the same pay as the then-unknown 18-year-old Jason Schwartzman as long as he could leave for a golf tournament.
*Famous* actors. Normal ones practically get minimum wage
Load More Replies...Wouldn't it be great if there was a flat fee for all the major actors in a film; and then whatever millions of dollars were accrued from how popular the movie was would go to a chosen charity or two--like cancer research or no-k**l shelters or something. Heck, I'd go to see movies at theatres more often if that were the case.
But what would really happen is the studios would just pocket the extra money and claim there was no profit via some accounting shenanigans
Load More Replies...As important as actors clearly are, the writers make or break a 'show'.
At this point of his career, I'm certain anyone who is in his film will do it for a fiver.
TIL Barefoot Doctors in China were farmers, folk healers, or young grads who received minimal medical training and brought healthcare, hygiene, and family planning to rural villages where urban-trained doctors wouldn’t go. They greatly reduced infectious disease and infant mortality in rural China.
Sadly, the Chinese government policies are taking rural medicine backwards again, with the focus of resources away from rural areas in order to build up giant cities to compete with the United States and the world in industry. (Meanwhile, the United States continues to wreak havoc on their own completely broken system!) Common sense has been replaced by greed and the damage of politics, making it possible for Robert Kennedy to single-handedly set back health to the early 19th century!
Yes, on the whole he is a dangerous clown, however..I AM pleased with the directive of less artificial colorings/flavorings.
Load More Replies...lol why are you bringing up religion in a post that has absolutely nothing to do with religion?
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TIL the UK passport office declined to issue a 6-yr-old British girl a passport because the child's name Khaleesi was under WB trademark. After the story was reported on & it was determined that a birth name cannot be trademarked & that trademarks are for goods & services, the decision was reversed.
People forgetting that Khaleesi was the character's title, not her name.
People also naming their children before getting to the end of the series...
Load More Replies...No doubt some teenage Mum with other kids called Kayden, Jayden, Tyler and Chantelle.
What is wrong with Chantelle?! That’s my middle daughter’s name and she’s 30. It’s just French for she sings
Load More Replies...A friend of mine could not create a facebook profile, because afictional name was not allowed. His name is Aragorn.
They will ask you to send a picture of your I.D, and if it matches what you said, then it does go on the profile
Load More Replies...Reminds me of the store "Iceland" suing the actual Iceland for the use of name on products 🫠
Isn't that just something they do to establish precedence so both parties can operate freely thereafter?
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TIL in 2008 Hugh Laurie made a single, off-hand comment claiming that a perk of being a celebrity was having a special lifetime, unlimited Burger King Crown Card (enabling him to eat there for free). He actually didn't have one, but after his comment caused a huge public response, BK gave him one.
Off topic but he's a great all-round entertainer. Look up his rendition of St James Infirmary on YT.
That is definitely a fine version but I'll always prefer Cab Calloway in Betty Boop https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDATXtewPrg
Load More Replies...He has also written a novel, The Gun Seller, which is very entertaining
TIL that after a rural Ohio county reported nearly 70 cases of leukemia in the mid 90s, it was discovered that a local high school had been built on an Army depot used as a dump for chemical waste.
Our high school is built on top of an old landfill and is required to undergo frequent environmental testing. The property was previously owned by the Air Force Base. Our community also happens to have some of the highest rates of neurological and autoimmune disorders in our state.
It's not like the US isn't so vast that they had enough space to build their schools on untainted soil or had the means to dispose of their waste properly. Noooo, gotta eff everything up in the name of saving/making a dime.
Load More Replies...The River Valley High School scare. The school grounds were not a chemical dump, just a former POW camp turned machinery depot. It served an adjacent plant owned by US Rubber (currently Uniroyal), who manufactured explosives in their Scioto Ordnance Plant. The claim of contamination is debated, and there is no actual proof of any link to the leukemia cases except for a single expert opinion commissioned by the Parent's Association. The claims were unconfirmed, and further research could not find decisive nor circumstantial connection, but the EPA nevertheless accepted to help financing a new school building as a precautionary measure. The US Corps of Engineers looked into the claims and only found already known disposal sites not in proximity of the school, not posing measurable hazard but nevertheless led a full cleanup.
The whole county and the Scioto River watershed are significantly polluted, but the largest contributors are agriculture, pastures and -back then- untreated sewage waste and runoffs.
Load More Replies...Get ready for colorful water and rivers on fire. Love Canal part2.
Load More Replies...A high school in the Boston, MA area was built on a landfill - too early, and the ground settled. Half the HS was unusable.
TIL the last living veteran of the 1853 Crimean War died in 2004: Timothy, a Greek tortoise captured from a Portuguese ship, served as a mascot throughout the war
Oh! Took me a second to realize that Timothy was the veteran. Also, despite the name, Timothy was a lady tortoise.
Yeah. Difficult to determine sometimes. Much has been debated about the sêx of the Great A-Tuin, on who's back the disk world rides. For obvious reasons.... (h/t the late, great Terry Prattchet)
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TIL of Les Horribles Cernettes. A parody pop group made up of CERN employees, they performed primarily at events for physicists. In 1992 a colleague asked for a photo to upload to his invention "the World Wide Web". They scanned a photo for him, and it was the first photo uploaded to the internet.
Yup, P2P, open servers, shared sites. I used webcrawler, not www based. World Wide Web was the start of a standardized format not the start of computers connecting via modem.
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TIL in 2012, two elementary school students in the state of Washington were severely sunburned on field day and brought to the hospital by their mom after they were not allowed to apply sunscreen due to not having a doctor's note. The school district's sunscreen policy was based on statewide law.
At my son's school I had to sign a form each year allowing the school nurse to give my son a band-aid, to apply antibiotic ointment, to use alchol-based hand sanitizer, and other such nonsense. He started school in 2008.
this is because some Karen or ken probably threw a fit because someone put something on there kid they didnt say they could and ruined it for the rest of the group
Load More Replies...Yeah, it was part of a state wide policy to protect the school from being sued if they gave a child something which contained an ingredient they were allergic to.
Load More Replies...I'm guessing it's more "what school's *aren't* allowed to do". It only takes one sue happy parent with an attitude to mess it up for everyone involved. Could be an anti vaxxer - but just as easily a parent of a severely allergic kid and a teacher whose attention slipped at the wrong moment. With hospital bills and insurance problems being the way they apparently are in the US parents may even have to sue in self defence, or go bankrupt.
Load More Replies...And there are actual people in the US who believe gender change surgeries are occurring on school gounds duing the school day.
Same people who believe that Hillary Clinton and Hollywood actors are running a child trafficking cabal in the basement of a pizza restaurant, while the great orange guy is trying to stop them and protect children. Turns out, the pizza place has no basement, and the great orange guy is a sexual offender who was best buds w Epstein, the child trafficker s*x offender.
Load More Replies...I Googled this. The law said that there was a limit to how strong these could be. Also that "waterproof", "sweatproof" and "instant protection" were banned by the FDA.
TIL there are dogs specifically trained to sniff out USB drives and other electric storage medium, most notably in the arrest of Jared Fogle (guy from Subway) for CP
This is a Basenji, they wouldn't be used for this. Love the breed but they wouldn't be used for scent work. Tracking yes (they're a sight/scent breed, where they track mainly with sight but also with scent). But the main reason? They're stubborn as all get out. They're not called cat-like for nothing. They do things on their own terms, on their own timeline.
They also can't bark to alert when they find something
Load More Replies...Doggos, is there anything they can't do? They're basically perfect
Apparently they can't (won't?) clean up the mess they made. They figure that's what us servants are for.
Load More Replies...You wouldn't even think that a USB drive would have a smell. Dogs' noses are incredible.
I still can't get my head around the fact that they can detect concealed cash currency by the smell of the ink.
Load More Replies...If they sniff out what the content was on the USB drives that would be very impressive
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TIL the lost city of Petra was rediscovered by a Swiss explorer who took it upon himself to learn perfect Arabic, local customs, and gained the trust of the Bedouins to learn the location of the gorge leading to the city.
People was living there the whole.time, so more unknown to the west then lost. And there are several ways to Petra except the gorge, with stairs and paths, as long as you dont have vertigo.
Yes, I think the post was clear that the Bedouins knew exactly were it was, but had kept it hidden from foreigners up until that point.
Load More Replies...Sounds like it wasn't lost then. Not rediscovered...was told/shown.
Recent excavations show levels below this rock carving. Ground-penetrating radar found voids below. After digging, the entrance to a tomb was found. After they opened it, many remains were found. GPR also indicates there may be another room below that one.
Just like America was discovered despite millions living there before Europeans "found it"
TIL that UPS founder James E. Casey wanted yellow vehicles, but a partner said they’d be hard to keep clean. They chose Pullman Brown instead - a colour that hides dirt, mud, and grime, and is still used on UPS trucks today.
You should see the ones in rural Michigan in winter.
Load More Replies...On a similar note: DHL colors were white and red. When in 2002 they became title sponsors to Eddie Jordan's F1 team, Eddie already had a sponsorship going on with Benson & Hedges mandating the color of the car to be B&H yellow. B&H was signed for a couple more years, then wanted out due to new regulations about smoke sponsors. But, traditionally the title sponsor had the right to brand the car colors! So Eddie, in his stark raving mad genius, instead of changing his car's color scheme TALKED HIS SPONSOR INTO CHANGING THEIR WHOLE CORPORATE IMAGE TO YELLOW. DHL did so and this originated their iconic livery, allegedly leading to a 2-digits increase in business volume.
Huh. To me DHL is basically the "old" German mail service "Deutsche Post" ("German mail"), whose main colour has always been this particular yellow. I looked it up and apparently 2002 was also the year that Deutschen Post AG took over and the logo colour changed.
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TIL there is 14-thousand-year-old rock art in the middle of the Sahara desert. The paintings show crocodiles, giraffes, and hippos, from a time when the Sahara was lush grassland and forest, and was able to support these animals.
In the Pilbara region of Western Australia there is 40,000 year old rock art showing similar ideas
It appears to be a 20,000 year cycle. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahara#Desertification_and_prehistoric_climate
"My grandfather was an amazing lumberjack in the Sahara forest." "There aren't any trees in the Sahara!" "Not any more, no..."
When they dug the foundations for the fountains in Trafalgar Square in London, they found fossils of hippos, lions and giraffes, from a time when that land had a favourable climate.
FUN FACT: Africa is going under Europe. Sublimation. Its not racist but idiots think it is. Africa is sliding under Europe and built the Alps.
TIL in 2017 Japan arrested a 74 year old man who had committed over 250 burglaries dressed as a ninja. He avoided most surveillance, but was seen "navigating tight spaces and running on walls"
"Well, ninja-ing doesn't pay the bills!" - "Weeeell, ..."
Load More Replies...Ok, but I have to ask: Did he pee on the frames of shoji doors to make them slide open more silently? Because that's apparently a thing you can do.
TIL Beethoven’s late quartets, now widely considered to be among the greatest musical compositions of all time, were so ahead of their time that initial reviews deem them indecipherable, uncorrected horrors, with one musician saying “we know there is something there, but we do not know what it is.”
Imagine a medieval minstrel listening to late 20th century freestyle jazz. They wouldn't even recognise it as music, is I think what thy're trying to suggest.
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TIL a man who developed 'popcorn lung' after years of inhaling the smell of artificial butter flavoring from daily consumption of microwave popcorn sued Gilster-Mary Lee Corp. and King Soopers for failing to warn on labels that the flavoring diacetyl was dangerous. In 2012, he was awarded $7,217,961
Diacetyl. Artificial butter flavor. It actually carcinogenic according to a lot of studies. Still allowed as a food flavoring.
Despite its name, Popcorn lung is actually a serious and irreversible lung disease. It’s called this due to it first being identified in workers at microwave popcorn factories.
With that monetary award he'll be able to afford a lung transplant.
Load More Replies...Not just consumption. That man is ENJOYING his popcorn. Like fully basking in the scented essence of it.
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TIL in 2014 a 27-year-old man fell asleep in a hammock while camping in Kentucky. In the morning, his friends saw him get up & sleepwalk off a 60-foot cliff. However, a rhododendron bush actually broke his fall, therefore he had no life-threatening injuries. He didn't even know he was a sleepwalker.
In 2010 Des Campbell was found guilty of pushing his new wife over a cliff while camping in the Royal National Park south of Sydney in 2005. He claimed she had fallen over the cliff when she left the tent to go to the toilet. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-05-18/des-campbell-guilty-of-wifes-cliff-murder/831336
I was literally just talking about this case an hour ago here in the u.s.
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TIL that, as President of the New York City Police Commission, Theodore Roosevelt would regularly walk the city streets at night or in the early morning to make sure officers were on duty.
While Teddy Roosevelt was far from perfect, from early in his career his goal was to make a difference in the lives of the average citizen.
And he was once shot while giving a speech. Was only saved by a Bible in his pocket and continued to give his speech before going to the hospital! Man was a real badass, no doubt about that.
No. The bullet hit his steel eyeglass case and his 50 page speech. He was not carrying a Bible. He spoke for 90 minutes before going to the hospital, where they determined it would be better to leave the bullet where it was. He carried it the rest of his life.
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TIL that George Carlin was a court-martialed Air Force Vet, Grammy-winning comedian, children's TV actor, and the 1st host of SNL. His arrest for performing the routine "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television" placed him at the center of a landmark Supreme Court case, FCC v. Pacifica Foundation
"s**t", "p**s", "f**k", "c**t", "c********r", "m**********r", and "t**s". So, why am I censored but Tanquam was not?
Probably because they use that zero width extension thing
Load More Replies...Took a second, thought the arrest was the reason for the court-martial. Was WTF?!
TIL that in 2022, 90% of complaints about Dublin Airport were from one person, who made over 23,000 complaints in one year
Thank you. It's 1am here in UK and I can't do numbers now.
Load More Replies...Could be noise complaints. One year, the FAA received 8,670 noise complaints about air traffic to and from Washington National Airport (DCA). One person was responsible for about 6,500 of those complaints.
I've met people who knowingly buy a house near a long established airport and then are outraged that there is an airport nearby. Sorry buddy, you'll find sympathy is right there in the dictionary betwixt s**t and syphilis.
Load More Replies...Therefore there were 2,300 possibly legitimate complaints. That should be the focus.
That statistic was contained in a recent report. Ireland has a bit of a problem with serial objectors delaying infrastructural development. The government is currently considering how to change the law to reduce the length of time the process takes.
TIL there was no film copyright law in Turkey until 1986, leading to films like "3 Giant Men" which featured Captain America and Mexican wrestler El Santo fighting against a chain-smoking Spider-Man villain, all to the ripped soundtracks of the James Bond movies.
In South Africa during apartheid, due to boycotts, records (yes, I'm old enough to remember that stuff) couldn't contain the original songs by famous artists. So there's a generation of us whose favourites are actually covers of popular songs from the '70s and early '80s!
There was a series of LPs in the UK in the 70s called "Top of the Pops" that were entirely covers of popular hits played by session musicians.
Load More Replies...I have a copy of "Turkish Star Wars". There's a scene where actual Star Wars space fight footage is being projected behind them, while the score from Indiana Jones plays. Wild stuff.
Everybody should try to see this movie once. Or as much as you can stand. Trust me your life is incomplete without it.
Load More Replies...Some of the Turkish films are just plain awful. I offer up "Our Man in Istanbul ", a horrible James Bond ripoff featuring Mad Magazine quotes as dialog.
TIL that many American churches once had bowling alleys in their basements, originally built as community spaces and loopholes to serve beer on Sundays. Fewer than 200 still exist today.
And thus the term "Holy Rollers" came to be... Sorry, I couldn't resist!
And the puritanical "Get your mind out of the gutter".
Load More Replies...Now I understand the bowling alley in my church when I was growing up.
When bowling alleys started, they switched to bingo, which was formerly at the Catholic Churches.
TIL the bubble style glass on pub windows not only offers privacy by distorting what's inside, but was sold cheaper as it was the last part in the process of blowing glass, perfect for establishments
It was the point where the roundel connected to the stem, being spun into a disc and then cut into plates. The roundels were a byproduct of the glass making. Privacy never even entered the debate (upscale restaurants and tea houses had proper glass), it was just a cost-saving and availability issue.
TIL that Rabies can make wild animals behave in a way that seems tame, friendly or even affectionate towards humans. Animals with Rabies don't always seem rabid.
And by the time you show symptoms, it's too late ☠️
Load More Replies...Here in the Netherlands this is common knowledge, we all learn as kids that if a wild animal like a fox seems tame, you should never get near it because it probably has rabies.
We learned it when I was a boy in Illinois, as well. Common knowledge among farm kids.
Load More Replies...The book Rabid looks at the history of Rabies from ancient times to present day. It's actually pretty fascinating.
Thanks for the suggestion, it sounds super interesting...Just borrowed it from my library!
Load More Replies...Now that is scary. If a wild animal was acting friendly to me I would definitely pet it!!
Can't believe we still haven't figured out a rabies test that doesn't require killing the animals. You'd think with all our tech and medical knowledge we'd have figured out something quicker/safer/non-lethal.
It sequesters in the brain stem so that technology is a LONG way off.
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TIL they dropped millions of purpose-bred sterile flies from planes every week in Panama from the 1960s until 2022 to keep a flesh eating parasite from getting into the U.S. cattle supply.
This strikes me as one of those programs funded for decades that got arbitrarily axed by Republicans to save a trivial amount of money.
Spot on! Covid-19 caused some supply issues and fund diversion under Trump's first term greatly reduced the program capabilities. The program is still ongoing, even receiving emergency funding in 2023 to try to recover the lost ground, but in 2025 a new USDA decision to move the breeding farm to Texas has caused further fund diversion and delays. Critics saw the decision as a shady move designed to put Mexican cattle industry under pressure and reduce their competitiveness on the american markets; Mexico immediately beefed up their own control program, but the US still closed beef imports.
Load More Replies...They have always been in the US. Cochliomyia hominivorax is originary to Texas, Central America, and the Caribbean, and used to be endemic in the whole south-central continental US, occasionally reaching the northern states in good weather years. In the US it has been eradicated through the sterile male flies in the 1960s, then they started moving south with the target of eliminating it altogether, being successful in eliminating it north of the Darien Gap in Panama. Changes in foreign policy and cooperation programs during Trump first term and COVID disruptions allowed the fly to return far north in the following years, threatening Texas once again.
Load More Replies...This is the classic: "we haven't seen this in years. Why are we still doing it?" . . . Oh, THAT'S why. 🤦
TIL 29% of male gamers prefer playing female characters, whereas only 9% of female gamers prefer playing male characters. In a typical core PC/console game, about 60% of the female avatars you meet are played by a male player.
As someone online said once “ if I’m gonna spent hundreds of hours staring at this character, it should at least be beautiful “
No. I started Everquest as a female Barbarian and the sexual harrassment and comments were gross. Never again.
Couldn't you attack them with a sword or something?
Load More Replies...I'm female and always play online with my male real life friend. We both prefer playing opposite gender and for some reason it's much more fun. 😊
Like I get to play be a male character in real life. It's ok, but it's not really something I want more of when I play video games.
Load More Replies...Designers typically put more work into the female armor/apparel. If male game characters were less visually boring, I would play them more.
From my time as WoW player, I remember standing joke that in-game G.I.R.L=Guy in Real Life
Huh, that's funny, my boyfriend always does pic a female character, and given the choice most of the time I pick male characters
A friend of mine spent HOURS designing his female avatar. I do like to take my time with character creation myself, but that extent was new to me. Almost like watching a little kid playing with a Barbie. Later in the game he even chucked some parts of an armor set (set bonus) for ones with worse stats, because he disliked the look. At that point I admit I roasted him a bit 😂 (Kingdoms of Amalur, FYI)
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TIL During the 1900 Galveston hurricane, at the Saint Mary’s orphanage, the 10 nuns tried to save 90 of the children by tying clothes lines around their own waists and each attaching themselves to several children. Only 3 older boys were left untied, and they would be the orphanage’s only survivors.
the debris from the storm surge tangled up in the line, bringing down all of those tied together. not a thing to joke about then or now. there's a memorial to the children in Galveston.
Load More Replies...TIL at the 2025 Kentucky Derby, all 19 participants can be traced back through their lineage to 1973 Kentucky Derby winner and Triple Crown champion Secretariat, who sired more than 660 foals.
He was bred with 50 to 60 mares a year. Then stud fee for cover attempt was 125,000
Considering that American Pharoah bred 161 mares last year (and he's being doing roughly that number for a couple of years), not really. Secretariat's roughly 16 year breeding career, it's roughly only 42 mares a year. And considering Thoroughbreds MUST do live cover (no artificial insemination), Pharoah's numbers are more impressive in terms of the number of foals he's sired. Also, Secretariat isn't a pony. He's a horse
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TIL personal or private helicopter flights in the US account for just 3% of helicopter flight hours, but more than 25% of fatal helicopter accidents.
I think "amateur" is the word you are looking for. Except you mean a structural framework.
Load More Replies...TIL the world's longest regularly scheduled nonstop flight (Singapore-NYC; 17,250 km) covers so much of the Earth that pilots can opt to fly the return flight westward over the Pacific, or eastward over the Atlantic and Europe depending on winds aloft, saving time and fuel
This happens also on less long flights e.g. London to Tokyo. Outbound we flew over Turkey-Kazachstan-China while on the return flight via Canada-Greenland-Iceland. Maybe mainly because we cannot over Russia.
It was common to avoid Russia even before Putin's latest shenanigans, since Russian overflight rates were among the most expensive in the world even before the latest post-invasion hike. Many companies held alternative routes pre planned and if conditions allowed (wind, weather and schedule) they would altogether avoid the Russian airspace.
Load More Replies...This sort of happened when we flew Chicago to Taipei - instead of going SW, we flew NE - at one point crossing near/over the Arctic circle.
Isn't the Auckland, NZ to Houston, TX, U.S.A continuous flight longer? I thought that came in just a smidgen over 18 hours. Correct me if I'm wrong.
I'll correct myself. I just checked, the Singapore-NYC fight is indeed the longest, however it is only 15,349km. It beats the NZ - NYC flight by about 1000km.
Load More Replies...TIL, during a set at the 1995 US Open, tennis player Shuzo Matsuoka collapsed from severe cramping for several minutes and was defaulted for delaying the match. The incident led to a rule change in professional tennis to allow players to receive medical treatment during matches without forfeiting.
TIL that Lewis and Clark Expedition participant and War of 1812 veteran, Patrick Gass, had to be removed from a recruiting station after attempting to enlist in the Union Army to fight in the American Civil War at the age of 91.
My father was the opposite extreme. He tried to enlist at the age of 13 in 1941, and THEY TOOK HIM. His father had to go and bring him back home. (He succeeded in 1944 and was sent overseas.)
Geez louise, sounds like your grandpa had his hands full with raising your dad. But must have made for some good stories.
Load More Replies...My grandfather was in the British Army in world war 1 at the age of 14. Until he bumped into his own father - who gave him a good leathering and had him sent home. About a week after my drandad left his father and most of those with him were killed.
TIL about the concept of 'digital dementia', a theory that excessive use of digital devices, such as smartphones, computers, and tablets, may lead to cognitive decline.
I can almost gaurentee its what your doing on your on your phone that causes that, not just the act of being on your phone. Imagine a person who uses their phone 24/7, but they are just reading the Encyclopedia the whole time; I doubt they'd have any substantial cognitive decline.
May? You can see this is real time. Attention spans are much shorter than they used to be, language and matg skills are falling, and nobody uses critical thinking anymore. And thats ignoring the hot steaming pile of garbage content people consume.
TIL about an Iranian translator named Zabihollah Mansouri, who on one hand became Iran's most famous translator, but on the other hand became known for liberally adding his own content into translations to the point of making up entire books
The Icelandic translation of Bram Stoker's Dracula was a very popular book in Iceland. It took over a century for someone to discover that it isn't actually a translation of Dracula, that it's a very different story. There are multiple theories, ranging from "the translator changed everything himself" to "he based the translation on a very old draft of Dracula instead of on the published Dracula book" to "he based it on a Dracula story from a Swedish newspaper". The whole thing is so weird and hilarious. Another funny one: a translator added an ad for soup into the German translation of a Terry Pratchett book, because the publisher had an advertisement deal with a soup company. So one of the characters randomly sits down to eat that brand's soup in the middle of the story.
I forget which country it was, but one of the translations of Good Omens had a load of stuff about Crowley having had a lot of girlfriends over the years. maybe the translator picked up on the whole Aziraphale and Crowley are in love thing (subtler in the book than the show, but still there. but it could be interpreted as a more platonic love, brotherly love, even a paternal sort of love from Aziraphale for Crowley etc) didn't like it, and decided to try and hammer home the idea that Crowley is into women.
Load More Replies...Wasn't there an ASL translator on TV a few years ago who was signing gibberish?
He was just doing what a smart editor does--improving the original (without consulting the original author, but many of them were already dead, sooooo.......you work with what you have).
Kudos to @Ace for providing the link! Just to expand on that (because I found the original post hilarious) here is a little excerpt from the yalereview article he mentioned: "When translating Dumas’s work, for instance, he tapped into his lifelong obsession with French court gossip and would sometimes go off on twenty-page-long digressions before returning to the novelist’s text. As a result, his version of The Three Musketeers, which is some six hundred pages long in the original French, weighs in at more than six thousand pages, published in ten volumes."
Bonus on a Stalin biography: "In Deutscher’s account, Stalin’s father moves to a bigger city to start a shoemaking business. He marries the fifteen-year-old daughter of a poor peasant, and together they move to a small apartment on the outskirts of Gori. The girl gives birth to three children, all stillborn. The fourth one survives. At his baptism, they name him Joseph. [...] In his translation of a thoroughly researched biography, [Mansouri] writes in totally fabricated detail about Stalin’s mother’s labor pains, the arrival of neighbor women, and the conversations that took place. Stalin’s mother asks for a midwife, and the neighbors ask who should be summoned. “Martha,” she tells them. The name of Stalin’s midwife is nowhere mentioned in Deutscher’s book, and chances are it is not recorded anywhere else either. "
Load More Replies...TIL that in languages such as Icelandic, they require the person to breathe in air while speaking. In Icelandic, it's used to signal agreement.
I’ve heard Finnish speakers do the in breath while speaking too, although I don’t know what it indicated
I have heard many Finnish speakers do the in breath, but it doesn't really indicate anything, maybe adds some emotion? Mostly used in short words like yes, no, well. Perhaps it is because of convenience - Finnish as a language allows the gaspy words without making it hard to understand, and our words are rather long, you might need a gasp of air in a longer sentence 😅 This might also be a dialect issue and some other Finn might have very different view about this (and I would like to know about it!)
Load More Replies...Some dialects in northern Sweden also does this. We sometimes say that yes in lulemål is like imitating a vacuum cleaner
Det har smittat sig långt ner i landet med, även i göteborg säger vi "jo, men visst" genom att göra det ljudet. Iaf i min familj och alla mina vänner. Mina engelsktalande vänner såg på mig som om jag vore ett ufo när jag var i usa senast och svarade "ja" på en fråga på det viset. lite fint ändå.
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TIL a woman with prosopometamorphopsia had a history of seeing people's faces morph into dragon-like faces. After a few minutes, she'd see faces turn black, grow long, pointy ears & a protruding snout, & display a reptiloid skin & huge eyes in a bright color. Treatment eventually helped control it.
"A neurological disorder characterized by altered perceptions of faces. In the perception of a person with the disorder, facial features are distorted."
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TIL coffee was all the rage in London in the 17th and 18th century until a fungus destroyed coffee plantations and forced the switch to tea in Sri Lanka
What's missing here is this: rust fungus decimated coffee bushes in Ceylon/Sri Lanka in the late 19th century, so coffee farmers switched to growing tea instead.
Load More Replies...Sri Lankan tea was far better in quality. Chinese farmers were known to regularly adulterate the tea, mixing it with low grade leaves and even coloring it with poisonous chemicals. Few European traders had strong connections to reputable traders, most (the East India Company too!) had to buy on the open market by intermediaries who had no qualms on scamming the buyers. It was not uncommon for "premium green tea" to be just cheap second-rate leaves colored with lead-based powder, copper salts or even arsenic, or mix it with chalk to increase weight. Ceylon tea plantations immediately became synonymous with high quality tea because the British instaurated a rigid system of grading, packing and QC, all under the strict control of a few experienced British master planters.
BTW, OP is wrong. The switch to tea in Ceylon happened at the end of the 19th century (specifically in 1869). Coffee was prevalent as a upper class beverage from the mid-1600 to the end of the 18th century; the switch to tea was not due to the Sri Lankan blight, but to the availability of Chinese imported tea in the early 18th century. By the 1839 the vast majority of the tea trade managed by the East India Company was financed and paid for in opium sales, providing a steady revenue of sterling silver (used for "official" transactions) and tea was by far the most consumed drink in England.
Load More Replies...The coffee, BTW, was awful. Because of the brewing laws, it was generally made in five- to ten-gallon batches and heated up by the cup. The big draw was that it "sharpens the mind dreadfully" according to Jonson.
Although tea was sold only from China at one time, who refused to allow plants or seeds to be exported. They only accepted sterling silver (the basis of the British pound sterling). It almost bankrupted the British until some enterprising fellow smuggled some plants out and started growing them in India. So this is bollox.
No, it's not. The two timelines overlap, both are true. The china tea trade also largely relied on opium being illegally imported into China by the British East India Company.
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TIL that in Sweden, almost anyone’s address, age, floor number and move-in date can easily be found online, because the Freedom of the Press Act contains provisions on the right to access official documents such as the national registration data.
To a certain degree, yes. On the other hand there have always been phone books listing name, number, and address, and now that many people no longer have landlines they give their own data, plus information on ménstrual cycles or medication, freely with every cookie and consent button on every web shop and site they visit.
Load More Replies...You can also run a licence plate and easily find out all those things about the owner. As well as income,.family and much more. And using lawline any connection to justice dep, if you have been victim,whitness or perp.
We still do have phone books 🤷 And facebook, google, amazon etc (including credit card companies) make good money from the data of people who accept their cookies or shop for anything from food to medication online. Alexa listens, and so do Siri and, again, google, and maps plus GPS will also tell you and anyone who asks where you are and where you regularly go.
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TIL that “Shakespeare’s Curse” on his grave warns anyone who moves his bones that they will be cursed — yet in 2016, a ground-penetrating radar revealed his skull is actually missing.
Hamlet mistakenly took it thinking it was Yorick’s. I’ll exit stage left after that attempt at humour.
You may be surprised to learn that many people don't believe in curses due to the fact that they aren't real
TIL 85% of all gaming revenue comes from free-to-play games. These games are free upfront and generate revenue through ads, in-game transactions, and optional purchases.
Genshin Impact’s revenue is significant. It achieved the highest first-year launch revenue for any video game at nearly $3.8 billion across all platforms by the end of 2022. Free to play it uses the ‘gacha system’ of in-app purchases for new characters and weapons. It surpassed $5 billion in lifetime mobile player spending by end 2024. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genshin_Impact#:~:text=Across%20all%20platforms%2C%20the%20game,revenue%20for%20any%20video%20game.
I'm sorry, they call it the "gacha system"... Like, sounds like "gotcha system?" Smh
Load More Replies...Yeah. Candy Crush used to get me hard so I'd buy the extra fish and I realised what i was doing and deleted the app. This was when i was given Adderall i didn't need because it just made me hi and obsessed lol. Took myself off of it.
I play games on my phone but once it gets impossible to win without purchasing something, I stop playing. It makes me mad. Just let me buy the game outright.
TIL that the character Kirby was named after a lawyer who successfully defended Nintendo against Universal Studios in a copyright dispute over the game Donkey Kong
TIL.. I always assumed he was named after the vacuum since he acquires powers by sucking stuff in 😅
The original name was Donkey Dong (J*p). Needless to say, it was changed.
Is this an offensive term? Don't downvote me, I've just never heard the term before.
Load More Replies...Kong had become a synonym for "BFG" or "Big Freaking Gorilla" when the DK game came out. It was gonna be a Popeye game (which they could now do if they did it today) but they didn't have the rights
TIL One of the most prominent methods of combatting the Great Fire of London was to blow up any buildings in its path in order to isolate the blaze
Often used with wildfires to create a break, the fire in theory cannot spread further due to the break.
There was a field fire nearby a few years ago. Since we're very rural, by the time the firemen turned up it would be a catastrophe, so some of the farmers came over from a neighbouring field and just started to plough a big circle around the fire. Through hedgerows, the road, telephone lines, they just ploughed through the lot. And got that fire contained. By the time les pompiers arrived, it had mostly burnt itself out, but they had to spray a lot of the area anyway in case of cinders.
TIL that WWII rationing in the UK didn't end until 1954
In the Netherlands, the last rationing (of coffee) ended in 1952.
Well, it wasn’t like all the farms sprung food overnight the day the war ended. No doubt it would have taken years for it to get back to ‘normal’.
TIL In the UK, the Home Secretary was required to attend Royal Births, to verify an heir to the throne was legitimately born.
Er, the question of legitimacy is determined at the initialization of the pregnancy, not it's conclusion.
With royal births it's both. There was a concern that if the child was stillborn (or a pregnancy faked), another baby could be brought in and passed off as the royal child.
Load More Replies...In years gone by maybe, it wasn't just the Home Secretary but half the court but I don't think they do anymore. Could you imagine Theresa May tipping up at the delivery suite to watch Prince George be born or Sajid Javid when Prince Louis was born, can't see Catherine allowing that somehow.
It was common in all the Royal families, not only UK. In some cases, it was just a government representative. In Spain it was a council of midwives of noble birth, and a notary. In others, such as France or Prussia, it was a full Royal Cabinet of physicians and noblemen; In Austria it was physicians, noblemen and an official record keeper; In Russia it was all the above plus a bunch of clergymen thrown in for good measure.
Why? It was a form of guaranteeing against succession disputes, accusations of child swap (to hide and replace heirs with severe genetic defects, or stillborn heirs), and confirmation of the heir being sane and healthy, a major stability driver in any kingdom.
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TIL: Early iPhone users in the US who did not specify a billing preference were mailed incredibly detailed bills of around 50-100 pages long from AT&T, itemizing every data transfer including background traffic for email, web browsing, and text messaging. One woman even got a 300 page bill.
Divorce rate would triple cause of the dating apps
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TIL that Miyazaki Hidetaka, the creator of Dark Souls, Sekiro, and Elden Ring, was banned from playing video games by his parents until he entered university.
No wonder his games are difficult. For him, just the act of playing a game itself was a challenge
I can't remember if it was him, or someone else that works for the studio that makes Dark Souls, but I absolutely love a comment that was made about the tendancy of Dark Souls games to always have a poison swamp area that players absolutey hate. This is heavy paraphrasing, but it went something along the lines of "I know players always hate the poison swamps, so I try to avoid adding them, but then I get these great idea for areas and I start designing them, and then I finish and look at it and realize 'Aw d**n it! It's another poison swamp!'"
TIL before Julius Caesar's reforms, the 355 day Roman year required a special month every few years to line the calendar back up with the seasons. The month was often enacted or cancelled for political reasons, so every year people outside Rome had to wait weeks to learn what the actual date was.
When you're using Roman numerals, the math is gonna be tough. Divide CCCLV by XII.
TIL that the term 'Sneakers' originally referred to how the rubber soles of the shoe made them much quieter when walking than hard leather soles of dress shoes.
I didn't know that,never really thought about it.
Load More Replies...What you call sneakers I call trainers (UK). Most of us don't train in them though.
Relatively few in the US use them to "sneak" either
Load More Replies...TIL that the world did not agree on how long a nautical mile was until 1929 when the nautical mile was fixed at just 1851.8 meters. It is the result of dividing the earth´s longitude in 360 degrees and each degree in 60 minutes. 1 nautical mile = 1 mitute
It's not that they didn't know how long it was, just that it was itself a standard unit and they didn't feel any need to define it in other terms. The definition was fixed, so there was no disagreement about how long it was, 1929 was simply the first time there was an internationally agreed conversion into metres, the French had done such a conversion much earlier. Oh, and the 1929 agreed measure was exactly 1852 metres; later calculations varied and that standard measure was effectively replaced over time with the more accurate 1853m that we use today.
I learned in radar school, in the early 1960s, that it was 1853 meters!
TIL the second ever DC superhero was Zatara the Magician, introduced in Action Comics 1 in 1938 alongside Superman. Zatara’s daughter Zatanna would not be introduced for another 30 years.
TIL of Jevons Paradox, an economic theory stating that as the efficiency of a resource improves, the overall consumption of that resource increases rather than decreases
This has historically been a major factor in climate change, specifically because of the increase in use of coal and petroleum. The same thing happens with traffic planing. They put in new roads to decrease traffic but more people use the new roads (because they get to where they want to go faster) so the traffic just increases.
TIL in 1994, a paper was published in a medical journal presenting a method to calculate the area under a curve, using rectangles and triangles, called "Tai's model". The researcher was unaware this method has been known for 2400 years and exact methods using calculus for 400 years
The author was naive, but the editor was really at fault for publishing it without proper review
It was properly reviewed, by medical professiomals and researchers in the biomedical field. Not mathematician.
Load More Replies...I recall being confused by my statistician users insisting on a certain calculation to derive the AUC. It involved taking the individual data points, approximating to a curve and then using a particular (software) function to derive the area under it. I'm not a statistician but I can do maths, so I told them it was all a complete waste of time, since all that was needed to get an accurate result was to add up the actual values. (They insisted, so I did it their way eventually).
TIL that actor Chaz Palminteri was fired from his job as a bouncer at a nightclub when he refused entry to a top talent agent who was having a party thrown for him there. This led to him writing the play A Bronx Tale, based on his own life, for himself to star in as he was not being offered work.
"It was Frank Sinatra." -- Chaz Palmenteri as angel in "Down to Earth" about Eugene Levy being fired for not immediatly seating someone in Heaven. Now I wonder if Palmenteri got it in the script.
TIL the US Dept of Transportation values a human life at 13.7 million dollars in a statistical sense, when evaluating potential safety standards.
Good to hear it is not a couple of grands, but a decent amount. I wonder what the Trump adminstration would value a human life; a lot less than that for sure.
I’m afraid that , at least for that administration, it greatly depends on where you and your ancestors hail from!🙄
Load More Replies...They actually put a price on each finger, toe, limb, you get the idea.
They don't "value" it at that; that's the average settlement across the US for accidental deaths.
They kind of do. The figure is used to decide if safety enhancements are "worth" doing - if the projected costs of the work are than this figure per projected life saved, then the work is deemed uneconomical and is nut carried out.
Load More Replies...TIL Isoroku Yamamoto, who planned the attack on Pearl Harbour, once studied at Harvard University in the United States and was appointed naval attaché to the Japanese embassy in Washington.
The day after Pearl Harbor, when Yamamoto was told that no American carriers were lost in the attack (because none were present), he announced to his staff "Gentlemen, we have just lost the war."
Chow mein is Chinese you dumbass, if you're gonna be racist then at least get basic facts right (or, better yet, don't be racist)
Load More Replies...TIL that in 2014, David Hester filed a lawsuit against A&E Television due to expensive items being planted in storage closets in the show before auctions in the show Storage Wars. He was let go in response.
So thats why they always find something expensive. We used to watch and comment that on our familys storage spaces one would make like 15 dollars total.
I've never actually watched it, but just from previews or clips I always assumed that valuable things were deliberately placed there. I thought that was the whole basis of the show?
Load More Replies...TIL in 2009, Ken Basin became the first contestant on the U.S. version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire to miss the million-dollar question. He debated what he would regret more: walking away with $500K and being right or answering it and being wrong. He risked it, lost $475K, and left with $25K.
"You gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em."
Load More Replies...I still remember the episode where the guy got to the million-dollar question and asked to phone a friend. He called his dad and said "Hi, dad, I just wanted to let you know I'm going to win a million bucks!" Proceeded to answer the question correctly.
TIL that Baldur's Gate 3 has sold 2 copies in Vatican City, meaning 0.39% of the country's population has played the game
Only because you can end Arch Devil Raphael. 🧙Cast a level 5 enchantment spell Hold Monster is a good strategy
Not necessarily...I've bought games and never got around to playing them!
"Sold 2 copies in Vatican City" doesn't necessarily mean 2 (or only 2) people have played it. One or both might’ve been sent as birthday presents to relatives; alternatively, they could've been borrowed and played by more of the city's population.
TIL that the U.S. Coast Guard was originally operated by the U.S. Department of the Treasury. It was originally created in 1790 at the request of Alexander Hamilton to collect customs duties at U.S. seaports and was the United States’ only armed maritime service until the U.S. Navy started in 1798.
And wasn't it because of taxes that America fought a war ans split from Great Britain?
Load More Replies...And is usually, in peacetime part of the Dept Of Transportation. In war times, DOD(or Dept. of war) :P.
The US had a navy during the American Revolution so it didn't start in 1798.
While the U.S. did have naval forces during the American Revolution, the formal establishment of the Department of the Navy occurred in 1798.
Load More Replies...TIL that just a little over one-third of Americans floss every day
I do, but that's only because I understand how bacteria colonize, and I'd like to keep all of my teeth.
I, too, want to bite the dust with my own teeth … in a distant future 😉
Load More Replies...TIL in 2010 the principal of West Sylvan Middle School in Oregon banned hugging after observing that girls were hugging 6 or 7 times between classes, students were arriving late due to excessive hugging, it was being used as a game to provoke arousal in boys, and, at least once, as a form of mockery
Of course anything a teenage girl does is about trying to arouse boys. I can’t think of a single other reason why a girl would do anything.
I recall bra straps in high school, apparently it was our fault they show through our shirts and very arousing indeed. Just so snappable and "boys will be boys."
Load More Replies...TIL the movie Boyhood (2014) was filmed from 2002 to 2013 and began filming without a completed script, with only basic plot points and the ending written initially. Director Richard Linklater developed the script throughout production and incorporated changes he saw in the actors into the script.
TIL in 1992-93, four children died and hundreds of people were sickened by an E.Coli outbreak linked to undercooked beef at the Jack In the Box fast food chain.
TIL As part of a live-fire test of a nuclear air-to-air rocket, 5 U.S. air crewmen agreed to stand directly beneath the nuclear explosion to prove it would not affect ground populations
TIL In 2012, golfer Jose Manuel Lara was disqualified from the BMW International Open due to a "serious breach of etiquette" after his caddie realized on the second hole that they were carrying 15 golf clubs (one more than allowed) and attempted to hide the extra club in a bush to avoid a penalty.
I can't remember who exactly, but one pro golfer back in the early 2000s self-reported that his child had left a plastic toy golf club in his bag, and technically that put him over the limit. I've never appreciated golf, but it IS a game based on gentlemanly competition, despite what the golfer in chief may think...
Trump's caddy drops golf balls in advantageous places so Trump doesn't have to cheat.
TIL in 1979 an armed group seized Grand Mosque of Mecca, taking hostages. They were conservative islamists led by a self-proclaimed prophet.
That armed "group" consisted of hundreds of Islamic fundamentals from all over the world. Thousands of worshippers were trapped in the Grand Mosque compound from 20/11/1979 until 04/12/1979. Saudi security forces and French Special Forces fought the militants inside the Mosque in order to end the seige. At least 117 lives were lost.
I was in SA (teaching EFL way up north for Northrop Aviation) when the attack occurred. Northrop had access to newfeeds that most others didn't at the time and from the reports, it was clear that One Should Not Mess with Saudi Security or French Special forces. It reportedly took many months to patch up all the bullet holes afterwards.
Load More Replies...TIL that Carlo Gambino, namesake of the Gambino crime family and one of the most powerful Mafia bosses in US history, only spent 22 months in prison during a 50-year criminal career.
TIL that after leaving the White House, Harry Truman was pulled over on the Pennsylvania Turnpike for driving too slowly in the passing lane
I grew up within 10 miles of Harry Truman's home in Independence, Missouri. In 1974, I purchased a car to use to go back and forth to college and the previous owner was President Truman. I still have a picture of that car in one of my grandmother's scrapbooks. My grandmother said the car was "ugly as sin" until she learned who the previous owner was. Then she promptly wanted a ride and instructed me to drive all through the area where her neighbors lived so she could call them later to tell them whose car it had been that they saw her riding in. LOL!
This wouldn't be the car they took on their trip to NYC would it. I just finished _Harry & Bess' Excellent Adventure_ and I loved it!
Load More Replies...TIL that George Washington never actually served in the British Army. Though he sought a commission in the Army, which would have afforded him prestigious privileges and status, he only served in the Virginia Militia prior to the Revolutionary War.
TIL that Janet Hubert, the original Aunt Viv from "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air", wasn't fired from the show. Instead, she declined a new contract that would have prevented her from taking other acting jobs, believing it was an attempt to "put her in her place" due to existing friction on the set.
Janet Hubert had beef with the star, Will Smith, so she was ousted. They eventually reconciled on the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air reunion show a few years back
TIL Australians have a diet trend called “Kangatarianism” that focuses on eating only kangaroo meat for environmental reasons
Half a story again! Kangatarianism is a diet mainly followed by vegetarians who include kangaroo meat in their diet because they consider it "more ethical" than farmed meat.
What is it like if you could compare the taste to something more common?
Load More Replies...One would think they'd also include invasive species like rabbit and wild boar
In some places you can buy camel meat, which is also an invasive species. People used to eat rabbit all the time, but it has gone out of favour (my uncle used to catch rabbits using ferrets on the farm).
Load More Replies...what the the..........BS..............we prefer to sell roo meat to the world as "beef"
TIL that Pete is the oldest continuing Disney character and not Mickey Mouse.
I just searched, and it says, "Pete is traditionally depicted as the villainous arch-nemesis of Mickey Mouse, and was made notorious for his repeated attempts to kidnap Minnie Mouse. Pete is the oldest continuing Disney character, having debuted in the cartoon Alice Solves the Puzzle in 1925. He originally bore the appearance of an anthropomorphic bear, but with the advent of Mickey in 1928, he was defined as a cat. "
Load More Replies...Pegleg Pete the cat - he was the 'bad guy' in Steamboat Willie' but predated that as he appeared in the Oswald cartoons. He went on to be Mickey's nemesis in the cartoon shorts of the 30's and 40's, Donald's neighbor in the comic strips of the same era, and Goofy's neighbor in Goof Troop and the Goofy Movie.
TIL in the late 1990s, McDonald's began implementing its "Made For You" system into its restaurants, which did away with a decades-old process of making sandwiches by the batch ahead of time and putting them in warming bins.
TIL that the primary nuclear reactor design in Canada (CANDU) is unable to be licensed in America or the EU as they forbid reactors with Positive Void Coefficients
Positive void coefficients have always been the bane of my existence.
Romania is in the EU and has two CANDU reactors with plans for two more. The EU does not forbid reactors with Positive Void Coefficients but they do actively discourage them. They are also not forbidden in the US.
Because Reactor 4 at Chernobyl used an RBMK reactor with a positive void coefficient and we all know what happened there. (A positive void coefficient relies on a 'space' in the reactor not being filled with water which absorbs neutrons.)
Load More Replies...TIL the Charlotte Hornets apologized after giving a child a PS5, only to take it away off camera and exchange it for a jersey. In a statement, the team said the incident was an "on-court skit that missed the mark" and that they would give the child the PS5 and a VIP experience to a future game.
TIL that two skinny tires on one wheel are better in the rain and no worse in dry conditions than a standard tire
because people are lazy : tyre pressure would need to be checked daily especially on the tires on the inside, because on tire going flat or punctured will make the istuation very unsafe
Load More Replies...My guess would be like they do on the rear of heavy trucks. Two wheel rims bolted to the hub would be easier to fix and mount.
Load More Replies...TIL that throughout human history the average age of having a baby has been 23.2 for women and 30.7 for men
Allegedly the study showing this is based on all sorts of factors (like inheriting certain genetic mutations/damage that come with age) from individuals that indicate the age of their parents, so it would be the latter.
Load More Replies...TIL poker players used to call an off-suit Ace-King an "Anna Kournikova". This is for two reasons: first is that it's her initials, and much like Anna herself, an off-suit AK looks really good but rarely ever wins.
Indeed, it's reckoned to be the 5th best starting hand. Nothing wins more frequently than two aces, although that's only about 33% of the time, so I suppose one could argue that it's less than 30% chance of winning and is hence "rare". Other hand nicknames include Motown (Jacks and fives - get it?).
Load More Replies...TIL The "gin and tonic" drink came about as a way to combat malaria in the 19th century. British sailors and soldiers were given a daily ration of "tonic water" (containing quinine--an anti-malarial) and would mix it into gin to improve the taste.
With tonic containing quinine, id wondered what the link was.
Load More Replies...TIL The "gin and tonic" drink came about as a way to combat malaria in the 19th century. British sailors and soldiers were given a daily ration of "tonic water" (containing quinine--an anti-malarial) and would mix it into gin to improve the taste.
With tonic containing quinine, id wondered what the link was.
Load More Replies...
