“Today I Learned”: 30 Interesting Things About The World That People Have Only Recently Found Out (New Pics)
When we come across something intriguing, we often feel the urge to share our excitement and pass it along. But instead of interrupting our roommates with random tidbits of information in the middle of a TV show, we can now turn to the internet.
There's a subreddit called 'Today I Learned' (or TIL for short) and its 30.4 million members make it the fifth-largest community on the platform. People go there to share all the new and fascinating stuff that blows their minds, and since its inception in 2008, the place has become like an encyclopedia.
From cheating in professional sports to kids' gaming habits, here are the best recent posts from TIL.
(Additionally, for those who want to learn more, check out Bored Panda's previous articles on the subreddit, which can be found here, here, and here.)
This post may include affiliate links.
TIL of the lesbian Blood Sisters, who, starting in San Diego in 1983, gave their own blood and organised blood drives to make up the shortfall after gay men were banned from donating because of the AIDS crisis.
TIL about Brady Feigl and his doppelganger, Brady Feigl. In addition to sharing a name and extreme similarities in appearance, each was a minor league baseball pitcher and had the same elbow surgery performed by the same doctor. A DNA test confirmed no relation.
TIL Hirsoshima, Japan is one of the few places outside of the US that celebrates Martin Luther King Jr day, due to his outspoken views on nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament.
TIL To "protect the truth," a woman recorded hundreds of thousands of hours of TV news between 1977 and 2012. Her archives grew to about 71,000 VHS and Betamax tapes stacked in her home and apartments she rented to store them. Upon her death, the Internet Archive agreed to digitize the volumes.
TIL in Nome, Alaska in 1925, a diphtheria epidemic struck and there was no antitoxin left. Land, air, and sea routes were unavailable, so 20 mushers and 150 sled dogs relayed the serum across 674 miles in 5 1/2 days, in subzero temperatures, near-blizzard conditions and hurricane-force winds.
TIL about "Terminal Lucidity." The unexpected return of mental clarity and memory shortly before the death of patients suffering from severe psychiatric and neurologic disorders.
TIL At the second Tour de France, the first four finishers were disqualified because they took the train.
TIL that in the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the total number of deaths, including deaths from cancer due to radiation exposure, is 1.
TIL of Baseball Hall of Famer Rube Waddell, who, despite his skill, showed various unpredictable behaviours including leaving midgame to go fishing, and was also incredibly easily distracted by shiny objects, puppies (who he would leave the field to play with), and fire trucks, which he would chase.
That was a dog spirit posession. That explains pretty much all the behavior and also why he was good with the ball.
TIL more than 1 in 10 Americans have no close friends. The share of Americans who have zero close friends has been steadily rising. From 3% of the population in 1991 to 12% in 2021. The share who have 10 or more close friends has also fallen - from 33% to 13%.
TIL In 1971, the Texas legislature unanimously passed a resolution honoring "Boston Strangler" Albert DeSalvo for his work in "population control." Representative Tom Moore Jr. introduced the bill to prove that they pass legislation with no due diligence given to researching the issues beforehand.
You know what else is population control... Abortion and birth control
TIL Zhang Zongchang, a Chinese warlord, had proclaimed that he would return only in a coffin if he was defeated in battle. When his forces were pushed back in a campaign, he was true to his word—he was paraded through the streets, sitting in his coffin and smoking a cigar.
TIL The "shower effect" of having more creative ideas in the shower or doing moderately boring activities is a real thing. Physicists and authors reported 20% of their most creative ideas and solutions to problems came with a wandering mind. Later papers termed this "the shower effect".
My better ideas seem to turn up when dozing off, the time between disappearing beneath blanket and sleeping. Have to keep a notebook between pillows.
TIL onions are toxic to dogs. They can cause hemolytic anemia and result in death. A 45-lb. dog would only have to eat one medium to large onion to experience dangerous toxicity levels.
Grapes/raisins, chocolate, garlic,I love my Jerry too much to even give him any form of human food, i cringe when I see ppl giving their dog chocolate chip cookies or stuff that can cause potential harm,Jerry will be 17 years old this June, eating only kibble and can dog food
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Thank you! My mom uses it for my cats. Luckily no harm so far but I'll get her to stop
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My yellow lab is always on the hunt for people food, particularly bread, and has even eaten parts of the bag too. I have to put especially dangerous things like brownies way out of reach. (She somehow manages to get things that seem completely inaccessible for a dog). She watched me set a box of chocolate doughnuts on top of the fridge once and gave me a look as if to say “Challenge accepted.”
Labs are just adorable furry garbage disposals. I'm convinced. I used to keep a list if things my lab has eaten. It included but was not limited to: half a pizza stolen off of the counter, an oven mitt, a loaf of bread (also stolen), a bag of gelt including the foil, and a steel-toed boot.
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One of my dogs once ate 1 raisin and about an hour later started to be sick. Had no idea what was wrong as grapes and raisins were not allowed in my house for this reason. Took her straight to the vets and my mum who had been at my house came with me. When asked by the vet if she had eaten something she shouldn't like chocolate, onions, grapes or raisins my mum said that she had given her 1 raisin even though she knew they were band but didn't believe me that they were toxic to dogs so gave her one anyway. 1 raisin made her that ill. I was livid with my mum she wondered why my dogs weren't too keen on her
I hope she paid the vet bill and your dog bit her.
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Neither did Rachael Rae. IIRC, she killed her first dog and had to adjust the ingredients in her brand dog food "Nutrish", to remove them. That was a big black mark on her career.
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Any plant related to onions, even alliums, also nuts, mushrooms lots of stuff. Check out veterinary websites.
I didn't know this either. I used to give my dog garlic in his food to repel ticks
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Ok, eating a whole onion i can see being a problem. What if they eat something that had onion powder in it, or like 1 diced onion bit... is that harmful? (serious question - i recently got my first dog, have avoided giving her human treats for fear of a minute amount of seasoning could be bad)
No, a little bit of onion seasoning isn't going to kill your dog or make it sick. Lots of people use garlic for their dogs as a method of reducing and repelling parasites without any ill effects. Raisins and grapes are much riskier - I can totally see why someone would give grapes or raisins asa treat withiut realising, ut who the heck is rewarding their dogs with a chunk of raw onion!
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not only onions but grapes/raisins and, i recently found out, avocados. and, of course, chocolate. any time i am eating chocolate and they come around i tell them 'it's chocolate' and then they walk away. but, also, when the day comes that i have to send them over the bridge i will make sure they will get one chocolate kiss. i saw a jar of these in my old vet's office with a sign that said they were parting snacks for the rainbow bridge as every dog should taste chocolate before they go.
That's so kind of them & you! 💖 I had a friend that when it was time for her elderly dog who had a lot of health problems, she shared some chocolate cake with him; I hadn't thought of that before, but I realized what a beautiful idea it is, they all deserve something wonderful like that for us to share with them 💖
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I would like to add another reason that our pets shouldn't be fed 'human' foods or pizza, biscuits etc. the fat in these foods will make them very poorly with Pancreatitis and they can die from it. As with the foods already mentioned the amount needed to make them ill will vary - so please ignore the pleading eyes!!!!
Cooked onions are safe but still there's no reason why a dog should eat them.
https://www.aspca.org/pet-care/animal-poison-control/people-foods-avoid-feeding-your-pets
Xylitol. Any food that contains this artificial sweetener can kill your dog
It's also dangerous for cats (as well as garlic, chocolate, alcohol, and grapes)
Our heeler rescue one time ate a whole bag of peanut M&Ms; didn't seem to bother him at all.
Tried to make a blooming onion in the air fryer. I obviously failed and threw it in the garbage. Next morning, my beagles knocked over the garbage can and ate it. Called the vet. They said to give them a teaspoon of peroxide to induce vomiting. One beagle threw up the entire onion. The other was like wtf you make me throw up, mom?
Learned that ages ago...looked up everything that would be harmful to dogs as soon as I rescued my first furbaby
Also dried grapes (raisins, sultanas etc) and apple pips, and chocolate, and mushrooms, and avocado, and poinsettia, and garlic
Store bought mushrooms are not toxic to dogs. Garlic has some toxicity, but thousands of people use it to help keep parasite problems under control and their dogs are just fine. You would need to give a dog multiple whole bulbs of garlic to get close to the level that causes illness.
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This is why I get angry at people sharing foods they didn't cook with their pets.
Fun fact - there's no grape Ben & Jerry's ice cream because one of them made a batch for his girlfriend and the dog got into it and died.
Also extremely toxic to dogs, Live with Kelly & Ryan. Or maybe it’s me. I don’t know. I’m not a researchologist.
i have seen Rottweilers eat whole onions, multiple times, and they were perfectly fine........
That's probably true. But one anecdote is not a blanket statement that applies across the board. Onions ARE toxic to canines. The level of toxicity depends largely on the size of the dog and the quantity ingested.
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The American Kennel Club's website goes into this at length. Several other respectable sources are cited. My vet independently advised me of this. I hope you don't own or care for any dogs.
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TIL Hans Gruber, the villain of Die Hard who appears on numerous “greatest movie villains of all time” lists (AFI, Empire, etc.), was theater actor Alan Rickman's first film role.
TIL that to get the pear or apple into a bottle of brandy, they place the empty bottles over the budding fruit at the start of the season, and allow it to grow into the bottle all summer.
TIL Caligula, the third emperor of Rome, once declared war on the sea itself, commanding his men to collect seashells as proof of victory.
That is nothing. The US once had a President that wanted to nuke hurricanes.
TIL most so-Called “Medieval Torture Devices” are fake actually made up by hoaxers, showmen, and con artists in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
TIL that Frank Prentice a survivor of the Titanic, stated that the scent of the iceberg was detectable before the collision occurred.
TIL that an achene is a single-seeded fruit, and that strawberry "seeds" are achenes. Each little strawberry achene is its own tiny fruit, and the entire rest of the strawberry is an accessory fruit. A single strawberry is actually approximately 200 little fruits attached to a big fruit.
My Dad is allergic to the seeds on a strawberry. He can eat them if they've been taken out
TIL Bill Watterson used to sneak signed Calvin & Hobbes collections onto the shelves of his hometown bookstore, but stopped doing so when he discovered they were being sold online for high prices.
TIL The ~1mm large animal known as Trichoplax can regenerate from just a handfull of cells and if its chopped up, the individual pieces will try to find each other and join back together.
TIL that when Weird Al wrote I Want A New Duck in 1985, he went to the library and researched ducks for a week.
TIL that a Dutch woman was denied Swiss naturalization despite having lived there for 39 years, because her 'neighbours' deemed her too annoying and not integrated into Swiss society since she often critized Swiss tradition of hanging large bells on cows' necks.
TIL that an 84-year-old man named Park Byeong-gu has eaten nothing but instant ramen for over 41 years.
TIL that a Kia/Hyundai whistleblower was awarded $24 million USD for reporting the companies' failure to recall unsafe cars and share accurate recall information with the government.
TIL that the record for longest time without sleep was set in 1963 when 17 year-old Randy Gardner stayed awake on purpose for 11 straight days.
My panic attacks once kept me awake three days a few years ago, I was having trouble stringing thoughts together and hallucinating by that point. Eesh, 11 days...
TIL that in the early 90's Bart Simpson T shirts were banned at many schools across the country (United States).
In 1992 George HW Bush said he wanted to make the American family "less like The Simpsons and more like The Waltons". Writers on the programme had Bart comment "We're just like The Waltons, we're praying for the end of the depression too."
TIL Canadian artist Michael Snow sued the Toronto Eaton Centre mall in 1982 after they put Christmas bows on an art installation of flying geese which he had sculptured. This led to a landmark court case, and a leading Canadian decision on artists moral rights. Snow ultimately ended up winning.
TIL the average minor spends about 7 hours per week with their father, but about 15 hours a week on video games.
Note: this post originally had 75 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
