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“Today I Learned”: People Share 101 Fascinating Things They Didn’t Learn In School (New Pics)
Learning never stops. If you’re open and energetic, you can find opportunities to expand your mind with new knowledge every single day. Oh, and we mean that very literally. Every. Single. Day. It’s something that the members of the massively popular ‘Today I Learned’ online community know perfectly well.
They share the new things about history, science, and the world that they’ve learned that day, and the facts are eye-opening, to say the least. We’ve collected some of their freshest new insights to share with you, dear Pandas. Scroll down and check them out. Don't forget your thinking caps!
We got in touch with Lisa McLendon, Ph.D., with a few questions about how the news is changing as our attention spans are getting shorter, as well as what can help motivate journalists to dig deeper and stay curious as they're covering stories. McLendon is the William Allen White Professor of Journalism and Mass Communications and the Bremner Editing Center Coordinator at the University of Kansas. Read on for Bored Panda's interview with her.
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TIL a woman flying from Manchester to Florida had a heart attack during the flight and when the stewardess asked for help 15 cardiologists came to save her. They were flying to a cardiology conference.
Professor McLendon told us that the way that we consume the news, and how it's produced, is definitely changing.
"People consume news from a much broader variety of sources, on a much wider set of platforms. We are awash in information and we are used to seeing it in small chunks," she explained to Bored Panda.
Journalists and editors, in turn, are reacting to these changes in their audience's preferences. Some outlets, for instance, expand to social media platforms where they have to format things very differently. Brevity and engagement become more important than in-depth reporting. But that's not to say that the latter has lost its appeal!
TIL Missy, a 100lb injured dog abandoned by her owner on Mount Bierstadt in Clear Creek County as a storm closed in, found by hikers a few days later who treated her but couldn't rescue her, they posted her location on a climbers' forum and an epic rescue journey began to rescue a dog from a mountain.
I tell ya. If Spocks and I were out hiking and something happened, you'd find our skeletons together. I couldn't leave my sweet baby boy. 💔
TIL the Cherokee writing system was made by one man, Sequoyah. It's one of the only times in history that someone in a non-literate group invented an official script from scratch. Within 25 years, nearly 100% of Cherokee were literate, and it inspired dozens of indigenous scripts around the world.
"News outlets know this and have adapted headlines to catch people’s eyes and presentation to keep the audiences engaged. For example, if you look at how news is presented on a platform like Instagram, it’s presented visually in a short video or series of images so people can quickly get the main point. Most of these changes have happened to optimize speed and engagement, not depth," McLendon explained.
Meanwhile, we were also curious about what can help motivate someone who is completely new to journalism to delve deeper into the stories they cover, while researching and writing them up.
"Depth is crucial for certain types of news stories, ones that aren’t easily summarized in a quick-hit format but nonetheless have great impact on people’s lives. Questions and creativity can help journalists stay motivated to delve deeper on a longer, more time-consuming story," Professor McLendon, from the University of Kansas, explained.
TIL Saudi Arabia accidentally printed thousands of textbooks containing this image of Yoda sitting next to King Faisal while he signed the 1945 UN charter.
TIL in 1947, the Canadian town of Snag, Yukon, saw a temperature of -83F (-64C). It was so cold, you could hear people speaking 4 miles away, along with other phenomena such as people's breath turning to powder and falling straight to the ground and river ice booming like gu shots.
TIL Procrastination is not a result of laziness or poor time management. Scientific studies suggest procrastination is due to poor mood management.
Often when you dig a bit deeper there is a reason for procrastination, which in most cases are that the task is in fact harder than it might seem at first glance (e.g. cleaning your room requires you to sort things, which may again require that you set up a system for where to put things, and that you have to do some hard emotinal work and let go of something that you previously valued (e.g. a worn out T-shirt that reminds you of a concert you went to with your favorite band)). Other times procrastination is caused by a fear of what would actually happen if you achieved the result that you have been chasing for so long (it is often followed by a huge vacuum, e.g finishing your education), or a fear of the fall out of the process itself (What if I call him and that leads to him rejecting me).
"One way to stay motivated is to first find out all the ways something affects people, then anticipate their questions: What does this mean for your audience? How can you show them why they should care? What questions might they have that you can help answer?"
Something else that can help is to think about how you can present the information in the best possible way so that your audience understands the issues and stays engaged.
"Usually this is not one big, long block of text—it may include photos, videos, maps, graphics, even interactive elements like a quiz. Thinking creatively about how to present a story can help a reporter stay motivated," she shared some practical advice.
TIL Officials went to congratulate Sogen Kato, the oldest living man in Tokyo, on his 111th birthday. Upon arriving to his house, a mummified body wearing underwear and pajamas was lying in his bed. He had been dead for 30 years but his family kept the secret to keep receiving his pension.
TIL the game Oregon Trail was developed by 3 college students trying to teach history creatively. The first version was coded in just 10 days in 1971 and played by middle schoolers for 5 days. The code was given to an educational nonprofit in 1974, and the creators never profited from the game.
TIL that since Brazil could not afford to send a team to the 1932 Olympics, they sent the athletes on a ship full of coffee. The athletes sold the coffee along the way to fund their journey.
The r/todayilearned subreddit is almost synonymous with Reddit, the front page of the internet, by now. Created all the way back in late 2008, the ‘Today I Learned’ community has grown by massive leaps and bounds since then. At the time of writing, there were a jaw-dropping 30.6 million TIL members. The sub is living, breathing proof of how much the internet loves education that’s presented in an entertaining way (aka ‘edutainment’).
Here at Bored Panda, we’re fascinated with the TIL community’s desire to learn and share new things with everyone who’ll listen. When you’re done reading our newest post about their fascinating facts, consider checking out our earlier features about them here, here, and here.
TIL The writer for "Die Hard with a Vengeance" was investigated by the FBI after they revealed that his story's plan of robbing the Federal Reserve through a breached subway wall would have worked.
TIL that when Californians wanted to name a new city after San Francisco businessman William Ralston, he declined and said he was not worthy of the honor. So instead they named the city in honor of his modesty: Modesto, California.
TIL that cats are more vocal with humans than with other cats.
Learning is far more than just getting good grades, being attentive in class, and doing everything that your teacher asks you to. True learning requires a lot of initiative and independence. It’s something that parents can encourage their kids to prioritize while growing up.
Recently, Bored Panda got in touch with Lenore Skenazy, the president of Let Grow, a nonprofit promoting childhood independence and resilience, and the founder of the Free-Range Kids movement. She explained to us that it’s becoming a problem that school keeps becoming a bigger part of kids’ lives. In the past, children had a lot more free time to do activities outside of school.
“Kids goofed around, played, explored. Now, with jam-packed schedules filled with adult-run activities, even those out-of-school hours are a lot LIKE school… except instead of learning fractions kids are learning lacrosse, or chess,” Skenazy said.
TIL the first known résumé was written by Leonardo da Vinci, when applying to be a military engineer for the Duke of Milan. It's mainly just a list of his designs for siege weapons (including trebuchets). He briefly mentions his art: "In painting, I can do everything possible." He got the job.
Well yeah he was awesome. Greatest painter of even our time I'd say myself no offense to anyone......but damn remarkable.
TIL the song Baby, It's Cold Outside was written by Frank Losser to sing with his wife, Lynn Garland, at parties to indicate to guests that it was time to leave.
They had agreed to never release the song to the public because they realized that it could come off a little creepy. (They meant it as a send up of such creepy behavior.) But when they divorced, Frank got ownership of the song, broke his promise, and reaped a fortune. His behavior surprised no one, since he himself admitted to being "the evil of two Loessers".
TIL that free divers' heart rates can drop as low as 11 beats per minute(as low as that of diving seals, whales and dolphins), in order to preserve blood-oxygen levels.
“Clever, normal kids turned into caged animals who despair they are no good, and their lives pointless. The answer? It’s so simple and so overlooked: Kids need more free time and free play—exactly what you loved most as a kid. Time spent making up games, practicing free throws, jumping rope, poking around in the woods—all of that is not wasted time. It’s a time when all of a kid’s senses are engaged and growing: Observation, participation, empathy, curiosity,” the childhood independence expert shared with us.
“It’s hard to see when you’re swimming in it, but kids learn so much from life, from friends, from siblings, from doing things on their own that they can NOT learn from an adult, even the most loving parent or gifted teacher. Give them back some free time, during the school day and after, and they will start to blossom,” Skenazy explained to Bored Panda.
TIL a school social worker noticed a young Jimi Hendrix's habit of emulating a guitar with a broom and attempted to get school funding to buy him a guitar. Her request was denied.
TIL more than 300 million people globally don’t have a single friend, according to Gallup data.
TIL the USA was supposed to adopt the metric system but the ship carrying the standardized meter and kilogram was hijacked by pirates in 1793 and the measurements never made it to the States.
Meanwhile, good grades aren’t the end-all, be-all indication that you’re doing well in life. “Quick! What was Einstein’s grade point average? How well did Dolly Parton score on her SATs? How many AP classes did Rachmaninoff take? Those questions are absurd. And so is the idea that a child is only as bright or talented as his grades and school performance,” Skenazy said.
“There are so many aspects to a person and yet so few are reflected in their report card. Creativity, kindness, a sense of humor, loyalty, wackiness—those aren’t measurable and so we forget they are even more valuable than an A+ on the spelling test.”
TIL about Ralph C Smith, the US' last surviving WWII General, who passed away in 1998 aged 104. Not only was he the 13th person to receive a pilot's license, he was also instructed by Orville Wright.
TIL that following the Black Death in England, peasants were able to negotiate better wages due to labour shortages. In response Parliament passed the Statute of Labourers 1351 which prohibited the soliciting of wages above pre-plague levels. This contributed to the English Peasant's Revolt of 1381.
The Black Death completely transformed everything. Social hierarchies in place since the Roman period began to collapose. Even the very landscape changed as farming patterns changed. Entire settlements were abandoned. Even architecture changed as the costs of stonemasonry rocketed. A highly decorated style of architecture gave way to a simpler 'perpendicular' style. It really was a HUGE event on every level.
TIL How toxic a polar bear liver actually is. The entire liver contains enough vitamin A to kill as many as 52 adults! If you spread it out and ate just enough to get your RDA every day, that liver would last you 143 years!
Raw IQ scores aren’t as strong an indicator of future success as many believe it is, but grades and doing well on school projects might just be. For instance, economist James Heckman’s found that someone’s IQ isn’t all that tightly correlated to how well you do financially when you’re all grown up. What’s far more important is your personality. Traits like diligence, perseverance, self-discipline, and conscientiousness are far more important than how smart you (think you) are.
You don’t get good grades just by having a high IQ score. You do so by having good study habits and being able to collaborate well with other students. In short, intelligence in the broad sense encompasses non-cognitive skills and traits which are far superior to scoring high on IQ tests. At least, as far as real-life success goes.
TIL movie theater sound quality was greatly improved thanks to Star Wars. Sound across movie theaters was generally inconsistent or low quality, George Lucas then co-created THX to fully project the audio quality of Return of the Jedi.
TIL The country of Kenya gets nearly one half of all it’s electricity from geothermal power plants.
TIL : the above. And it’s a resource that can’t be grabbed. Way to go Kenya
TIL in 1985, drug smugglers dropped 40 containers of cocaine from a plane above Tennessee because the plane was too heavy. 3 months later, investigators found the containers and a dead black bear that had consumed 75 pounds of the drug. It’s stomach was “literally packed to the brim with cocaine.”
TIL that in the Vietnam war the US conducted a psychological warfare operation which used loudspeakers to play eerie sounds and altered voices to represent the spirits of dead N. Vietnamese soldiers so as to undermine their morale. Operation Wandering Soul.
TIL that an audio recording of a lock being opened provides enough data to reproduce the key required to open that lock, even with a cell phone's microphone.
TIL that when bears hibernate, they "hold it in" for almost half a year. This is due to a fecal plug that forms in their lower intestine that prevents them from pooping while hibernating.
TIL In 1998 part of the hull of the Titanic was recovered and is displayed in a casino. Visitors are given a 'boarding pass' with the name of a passenger and find out the fate of their passenger at the end of the exhibition.
This is kinda neat but at the same time cringe because of the family of these people. However great historical involvement but just kinda.......😬
TIL that after Ayrton Senna's fatal crash, an Austrian flag was found in his race car. He had intended to raise it in honor of Roland Ratzenberger, who had died during qualification the previous day.
That was one of the saddest weekends I remember. Everyone was so quiet everywhere, it was quite eerie
TIL that the number of abs you have is genetic and varies from person to person. The number of abs you have depends on the number of rings of abdominal tissue that someone is born with, and some people can actually have 10-pack abs.
TIL that Titanic crewman Herbert Pitman made an attempt to row his lifeboat over to rescue people in the water, but was overruled by the other occupants of the boat, who were worried about people swarming them and duly complied. Pitman said that this haunted him throughout his life.
TIL Mount Everest is named after Sir George Everest despite him having zero connection to the mountain (he never even saw it) and against his own wishes. He objected to the naming on the grounds that "Everest" could not be easily written in Hindi nor pronounced by the local people
TIL Fender Guitars did a study and found that 90% of new guitar players abandon playing within 1 year. The 10% that don't quit spend an average of $10,000 on hardware over their lifetime, buying 5-7 guitars and multiple amps.
Musicians have an acronym or idiom for this habit: “GAS” – gear acquiring syndrome. I’ve been “suffering” from this peculiar “disorder" for decades – and healing is not yet in sight. ;^)
TIL that a Kentucky man won $450,000 in a lawsuit against his former employers who allegedly fired him for having a panic attack and leaving his own surprise birthday party.
The worst part of it, is that they *knew* of his condition, but did it anyway
TIL when Dan Shechtman discovered quasiperiodic crystals, he was widely ridiculed. Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling said of the discovery, "There is no such thing as quasicrystals, only quasi-scientists." Shechtman would later win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery.
TIL Cheryl Gates McFadden (Dr Beverly Crusher from Star Trek TNG) was Director of Choreography on The Labyrinth (1986). She goes by Cheryl McFadden when doing choreography, and Gates McFadden when it's an acting role.
TIL that it takes approximately 20 minutes from the time you start eating for your brain to send out signals of fullness. Leisurely eating allows ample time to trigger the signal from your brain that you are full.
Why I love leisurely eating I like eating anyways. Food is awesome and yummy in my tummy.
TIL when Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen, who had a famously deep voice, quit smoking cigarettes at 77-years-old in 2012, he thought that his vocal range would become higher and improve. Instead, his voice became even lower.
TIL this seatbelt loop serves a real purpose - in an accident the seat belt is put under extreme pressure, the threading in the loops can rip, and the loop unfolds. This action adds a few extra inches to the belt and can absorb more energy to keep you safer and decrease the risk of injury.
TIL That in 2004, a 25 year old virginal Japanese woman had surgery to remove a mature fetiform teratoma (a tumor that formed a doll-like structure) that contained brain, eye, spinal nerve, ear, teeth, thyroid gland, bone, bone marrow, gut, trachea, and blood vessel tissue... and more.
TIL 130 million American adults have low literacy skills with 54% of people 16-74 below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level.
I learned that quite some time ago. It explains the previous president.
TIL The top (summit) of Mt Everest is grey limestone, complete with embedded marine invertebrate fossils (e.g. trilobites). This means that the rock that makes up the top Mt Everest was once underwater.
So I read it as :"This means that the rock that makes up the top Mt Everest was once 𝑢𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑟𝑤𝑒𝑎𝑟." It didn't make sense to say the least.
TIL the "Empty London" scenes in 28 Days Later were achieved by filming at dawn and simply asking people to stop walking through shots, as there was no room in the $8m budget to actually shut down any parts of the city.
TIL of Gilles Garnier, a french recluse living in a forest in France. Due to his lifestyle he had trouble finding food so he began hunting children and eating them raw, like an animal. People initialy thought the attacks were done by a werewolf, so he was convicted of lycanthropy and witchcraft.
This was in the 16th century - link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilles_Garnier
TIL James Doohan (who played Scotty on Star Trek) was shot several times by friendly fire on D-Day after surviving the storming at Juno Beach. He lost a finger as a result, which was mostly (but not always) hidden using camera angles while filming Star Trek 21 years later.
I'm surprised they didn't just factor the missing finger into the plot. Maybe he was shy about other people seeing it.
TIL that Black Widow antivenom is made by injecting horses with venom over a period of time. The horse develops antibodies against the venom, then the horse is bled and the antibodies purified for later use.
TIL Bosses spend significantly more personal time on social media during work hours than their subordinates, according to a Norwegian study of more than 11,000 people.
TIL a Looney Tunes director and animator, Robert McKimson, bragged to colleagues for getting a good bill of health at 67. His family history of living past their 90s caused him to tell his colleagues: "I'm going to be around after you guys are gone!" He died two days later of a heart attack.
TIL John Candy was paid $414 for his cameo in Home Alone. This was a lower fee than was paid to the pizza delivery guy. He did it as a favor to the director and improvised all of his dialogue.
That is so sad I don't care if it was a favor or not John candy was an awesome actor
TIL that women die 17% more often in car crashes then men. In a frontal car crash with both sexes buckled in, their injury rate is also 73% higher.
TIL Monty Python reunited for Monty Python Live (Mostly) (2014) because they suddenly owed £800,000 pounds to Mark Forstater over Spamalot royalties. The ten shows were their first live ensemble performances in 34 years.
TIL Mice don’t actually like cheese and are even repelled by many cheeses due to the smell. If they’re hungry enough they’ll try to eat anything, but they won’t actively seek out cheese.
Rats, on the other hand, ADORE the stuff and will greedily snatch it out of your hand. (When I caught the mice who had invaded my pantry, I used the same pre-buttered microwave popcorn they'd been stealing since hey, I already knew what they liked and it was ruined anyway. Caught six of the cheeky little bastards with that).
TIL about the now-extinct Stellar's sea cow, a 30 ft long sea mammal similar to a manatee which had so much blubber that its buoyancy wouldn't permit it to ever be totally submerged.
TIL NASA plans to retire the International Space Station by 2031 by crashing it into the Pacific Ocean.
Lol. NASA doesn't have a good record. In 1979 they tried to bring Skylab down in the Indian Ocean. Instead, a good deal of it crashed into Western Australia. The WA government sent NASA a ticket for littering. NASA didn't pay it.
TIL about Pupfish, the most rare endangered fish species. They live exclusively in "Devil's Hole", a single tiny pool of water of unknown depth, roughly 90 miles NW of Las Vegas.
There are blind white crabs in one lace like that. https://talesofodyssey.com/the-blind-white-crabs-of-lanzarote/
TIL We often turn the radio down or off when looking for an address to allow the brain to shift its focus to a critical task, finding the desired location.
This is because, no matter what others believe, the human brain can not multi-task, when it comes to conscious activities.
TIL 5-time world champion figure skater Michelle Kwan is the US ambassador to Belize.
TIL that white dwarf stars will eventually cool to form black dwarf stars, but none yet exist because the universe is not old enough.
TIL that a cup of grape juice contains 33% more sugar than a cup of grape soda.
Til Texans eat pickles at the movie theater, and many are surprised to learn no one else does.
TIL Robert De Niro paid a dentist $5,000 to have this teeth ground down to look more menacing for Cape Fear. He later paid $20,000 to have his teeth restored once production was complete.
TIL That 38% of world wide unprovoked shark attacks occur in Florida.
TIL: The pre-game military fly-overs conducted while the Star Spangled Banner plays at pro sports events is actually a planned training run for flight teams and doesn't cost "extra" as many speculate, but is already factored into the annual training budget.
TIL that Abraham Lincoln - a fearsome wrestler as a young man - once wrestled the county champion outside the store where he worked, as the whole town looked on. When his opponent began cheating, Lincoln picked the man up and flung him to the ground, knocking him out and starting an all-out brawl.
TIL Scans have revealed there’s a large unexplored void in the Great Pyramid of Giza.
TIL In the 1970s East Germany had a coffee shortage so they made Vietnam into a supplier. East Germany invested the equivalent of tens of millions of dollars into Vietnam in exchange for half of Vietnam's coffee harvests for 20 years. By the first harvest in 1990 East Germany was already dissolved.
TIL that not only is it possible to make cheese from breast milk, someone made mac and cheese with it and served it to Gordon Ramsay
TIL In 2012, Canadian Justin Williams assaulted and stabbed his neighbor for coming over tell him to stop yelling over a video game (World of Warcraft), he replied "it's not a game, it's my life" then grabbed and stabbed his neighbor. The neighbor lived, but now has a scar in his chest.
TIL Thomas Edison electrocuted dogs, cats, cows, horses, and an elephant in an attempt to discredit Nikola Tesla's work with AC electricity.
TIL cholera was reintroduced to Haiti after a century by UN peacekeepers responding to the 2010 earthquake. The resulting outbreak was the worst on record, killing 10,000 and infecting 820,000.
TIL Terry Crews said the reason Fox didn't promote Idiocracy was because Mike Judge had companies pay for product placement and then he made them look bad (Starbucks gave out hand-jobs). The film tanked in limited release but made over 20 times its gross domestic box office revenue in DVD rentals.
TIL that in 2017 former NBA star Kevin Garnett showed up at the sentencing of his accountant Charles Banks to provide him with moral support upon his conviction for defrauding NBA star Tim Duncan of $7.5 million. Garnett later learned that Banks have also defrauded him of $77 million.
TIL that Muhammad Ali insulted his British opponent Henry Cooper before their 1963 bout. Cooper proceeded to give Ali a punishing fight and knocked him down at one point. Afterwards, Ali conceded that Cooper had given him the fight of his life.
Henry Cooper was a great heavyweight boxer. His great downfall was that he had quite prominent eyebrow bones (sorry not sure of proper name) and cheekbones. This meant that he was prone to bleeding very badly despite often being ahead in fights. I believe Ali said 'the punch Cooper hit me with, he didn't just shake me. He shook my relations back in Africa. ' I had the privilege to see them fight at Arsenals ground, Highbury in 1966.
TIL that during WWII workers at the Henry Ford aircraft factory Willow Run built a staggering 8,685 B-24 bombers in three years. No one had ever manufactured airplanes on such a scale before. At its peak in 1944, it produced a B-24 every hour.
At the start of production, things didn't go smoothly at all. Consolidated (the company that designed the aircraft) kept making small but significant changes to the design, while Ford tried to set up the production line. Consolidated didn't want to listen to Ford's complaints, and kept making changes. Ford had to go all the way to President Roosevelt (whom he actually despised) to freeze the design, so they could finally start series production.
TIL that Neil Armstrong was the subject of a hoax claiming that he converted to Islam after hearing the call to prayer on the Moon. Despite being officially refuted, the rumor persisted partly because of the confusion between Armstrong's residence in Lebanon (Ohio) to Lebanon the country.
So, schooling, especially geography, has been lousy in the US for over 50 years
TIL that Mehmet II found bodies of about twenty thousand men, women, and children impaled by Vlad the Impaler when he entered Targoviste.
The history of Vlad is pretty intense. He had to fight his own brother who was brainwashed by the enemy. His Dad never loved him as much as his brother. And he impaled people as means of fearmongering. It was his retaliation against a much much much larger army.
TIL Alexander Hamilton’s first son Philip died from a duel three years earlier near the same spot Alexander was fatally shot, using the same set of pistols.
TIL There were 121 witnesses to the JFK assassination, and 51 of them believed shots came from the grassy knoll. A further study examined 64 witnesses, with over half putting gunshots from the knoll.
TIL the Pulitzer Prize winning book of poetry in 2014 sold less than 400 copies
"3 Sections, by Vijay Seshadri (Graywolf Press) A compelling collection of poems that examine human consciousness, from birth to dementia, in a voice that is by turns witty and grave, compassionate and remorseless." https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/vijay-seshadri
TIL Because passenger airflights aren’t covered by the ADA, wheelchairs can’t be brought onboard. They are regularly returned damaged to their users, who depend on staff for everything from boarding, to using the bathroom, to departing.
TIL that in 1988 with the 1,390th pick, the Dodger's drafted Mike Piazza because the manager of the team owed a favor to Piazza's father. Piazza ended up playing in the league for 16 years and is regarded as one of the best offensive catchers in baseball history.
TIL the Irish Potato Famine, an agricultural disaster that occurred between 1840 and 1850, resulted in over one million deaths and another million emigrants leaving the country.
But the Choctow nation sent them money. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/05/world/coronavirus-ireland-native-american-tribes.html
TIL that depleted Uranium is used to create projectiles capable of puncturing tank shells and armor. This is not only because it is extremely dense, but also because upon impact, a uranium shell will continually sharpen itself and retain its shape.
TIL about Ken Fritz, an audiophile that spent close to 30 years developing in his home what he and others consider the worlds greatest stereo sound system and listening room that boasts 35,000 watts, nine-foot-tall speakers, and a 1,500-pound turntable.
TIL the B-2/Stealth Bomber costs $135,000 for every hour of flight time.
TIL that 1.3 million Americans have a Top Secret security clearance.
TIL Chile and Argentina have a greater percentage white population than that of Canada and the U.S.
TIL restaurants can lose their Michelin star(s). If there is an inconsistency and things become less than satisfactory in an awarded restaurant, Michelin stars can be taken away. Gordon Ramsay once equated losing his Michelin stars in 2014 to breaking up with a girlfriend.
There are about dozens of chefs who actually refused or returned their Michelin Star, in order to get their freedom of creativity back. A Michelin Star freezes your menu for a minimum of 4 months
TIL Tony Sampson, the voice of Eddy from "Ed, Edd n Eddy," was threatened with a blacklist after he asked for a small raise. After the show ended in 2009 he retired from voice acting and now works in the Canadian oil industry.
TIL that the “n” in 7-ELEVEn is lowercase because the company president’s wife thought the all-caps was too harsh and, with a lowercase letter, the logo looked more graceful.
That woman was right and thought outside the box. I never noticed before reading this, and after checking it, it makes sense.
TIL the ice cream truck jingle most Americans grew up with was used in minstrel shows, so RZA (of Wu-Tang Clan) created a new, publicly-available ice cream jingle.
TIL of the Carolina Parakeet, which was once native to the US and went extinct in the 1910s. It lived as far north as New York and Wisconsin and as far west as Colorado.
It breaks my heart as an American living in in the eastern US that I missed out on seeing them.
TIL Ronald Reagan would eat jelly beans to help him quit smoking. He had over 300 thousand jelly beans shipped to the White House each month, he would give them away to visitors and staff regularly. His favorite flavor was black licorice and there are special "Jelly Belly Ronald Reagan" packs.
Well what ever works is what you need. Glad he could stop. It hard.
TIL of Operation Babylift, a US-led evacuation of children from Vietnam during the Vietnam War for adoption in America, Canada, Australia, and Europe. The very first flight crashed shortly after takeoff and killed 78 children.
Apparently the locks on the cargo door failed [they had been stripped for parts and just couldn't engage properly anymore] and it opened, causing an explosive decompression. The result blowout severed a bunch of cables and the pilots lost half the hydraulics, the rudder and the elevator. The pilots tried to make an emergency landing but lost control and the plane crashed, broke into pieces and caught fire. There were 176 survivors though.
TIL Lou Pai was a senior executive at Enron who, after having an affair with a stripper, to satisfy his divorce settlement, cashed out $250 million of his Enron stock just before the company's stock price collapsed and it filed for bankruptcy protection.
TIL Manuel Noriega was a real person, a former dictator who sued Activision over using him in the game Call of Duty Black Ops II without his knowing and as a villain. He lost the case.
TIL While filming Monty Python & The Holy Grail (1975), Graham Chapman developed delirium tremens (DTs) from lack of alcohol on set. DTs can be fatal even with treatment and typically only affect habitual drinkers who consume 0.5L of liquor or 7-8 pints of beer daily for 10 years or more.
TIL Warren Buffett bought Berkshire Hathaway purely out of spite. In the 60s it was a failing textiles company which he wanted to sell his stake in. When its president lowballed him, he bought the whole company just to fire him. In 2010, he said it was the biggest investment mistake he ever made.
TIL that drinking a four-ounce shot of vanilla extract is equivalent to doing four shots of vodka
TIL about badge engineering, which is the practice of marketing a vehicle under 2 or more brand names. A good example being the 2010 Ford Escape, Mercury Mariner, & Mazda Tribute, shown here.
This has been happening since almost the beginning of the Auto industry.
TIL that when JFK was shot in the head, doctors gave him a blood transfusion in an attempt to save him.
Yes, lack of blood is the clear issue when your skull has a hole in it.
Some of these made me roll my eyes. I dread reading BP in ten years: "TIL that USA has had one black american president and he served two terms!!!!"
Yeah, I thought TIL was for interesting trivia, not basic knowledge you just learned in your 8th grade history class.
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I actually learned some things in this thread and it wasn't the same TILs posted ad nauseum on this site. Thank you! Based on the other comments, I best not click to read the original 101 images.
TIL that a full can of whipped cream is terrible for digestion. …I regret nothing.
Some of these made me roll my eyes. I dread reading BP in ten years: "TIL that USA has had one black american president and he served two terms!!!!"
Yeah, I thought TIL was for interesting trivia, not basic knowledge you just learned in your 8th grade history class.
Load More Replies... I actually learned some things in this thread and it wasn't the same TILs posted ad nauseum on this site. Thank you! Based on the other comments, I best not click to read the original 101 images.
TIL that a full can of whipped cream is terrible for digestion. …I regret nothing.
