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28 Fascinating Facts You Might Not Know From The ‘Today I Learned’ Online Group
Article created by: Gabija Saveiskyte
If an apple a day keeps the doctor away, does learning new facts each day keep boredom at bay?
Alright, I promise I’m not writing a Doctor Seuss-esque story here. But if you’re interested in learning something new, you’ve come to the right place! We’ve got a brand new list of facts from the “Today I Learned” subreddit that will give you something fascinating to talk about at your next dinner party.
Be sure to upvote the facts that you learned from this article, and feel free to share anything else you've recently found out in the comments below. We’re never too old to learn something new, so if you’re interested in continuing your education after finishing this article, you can find some of Bored Panda’s previous “Today I Learned” pieces here, here and here!
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#1
TIL the pet food company Chewy sends flowers and a card when a customer's pet dies. They will reimburse the purchase of unopened food and suggest it be donated to a shelter. They also offer the option of talking to someone about the grief of losing a pet.
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#2
TIL that Steve McQueen had a habit of demanding free items, in bulk, from studios, when doing movies, it was later discovered that these items (like electric razors and jeans) went to Boys Republic reformatory school, where McQueen had been, as a teenager.
#3
TIL Oscar the Therapy Cat accurately predicted 25 deaths. After this the staff started notifying family members of residents to come say goodbye if Oscar was curled up next to them.
#4
TIL some insomniacs may have nights of "sleep misperception", where it feels like you were awake all night but you actually slept for hours.
#5
TIL In 36BCE, Roman statesman Marcus Varro wrote about germs, describing "minute creatures which cannot be seen by the eyes, which enter the body through the mouth & nose & there cause serious diseases". The germ theory of disease would not be widely accepted for another 1,900 years.
#6
TIL Teddy roosevelt, who is thought of as the national park man, is actually the National forest man. During his presidency he founded 5 of 63 US national parks. As for national forests, he founded 150 of the 154 US national forests!
#7
TIL David Copperfield was once robbed at gunpoint -- but successfully performed an illusion to convince the robbers his pockets were empty when they weren't.
#8
TIL in 1912 4 yr-old Bobby Dunbar disappeared, was found eight months later in Mississippi with a couple that refuted that it was him. Courts ordered the boy to live with the Dunbars. 100 years later DNA verified that the boy was Bruce Anderson and had been wrongly identified by Dunbar's parents.
#9
TIL NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar agreed to appear in the movie "Airplane!" on the condition he be paid $35,000.. the exact price of a rug he wanted to purchase.
#10
TIL that the geologist Michel Siffre spent 2 months underground without time cues to study how his body clock adapted, repeated the experiment for even longer on himself and more subjects, and discovered that their bodies tended to switch to a 48-hour clock. In one case, one even slept 34 hours.
#11
TIL Marjoe Gortner is an Evangelical preacher who decided to pull the curtain back on the scams he and other preachers used. He invited a crew to film behind the scenes as he revealed tricks of the trade and the sacks full of cash he earned nightly. It won the '72 Academy Award Best Documentary.
#12
TIL certain species of wild oats are able to walk. They have a pair of 'legs' called awns which flex and make the seeds crawl around, to find an ideal place to plant itself.
#13
TIL in an effort to protect her son and daughter from falling under the sinister charms of Charles Manson, Angela Lansbury relocated her family from LA to Ireland. Describing Ireland as “free from bad influences”, she then refused work to better support their recovery from heroin addiction.
#14
TIL Abraham Lincoln signed the bill creating the Secret Service on April 14, 1865, the day he was assassinated.
#15
TIL Wheat and Barley were ancient Egyptian pregnancy tests. A woman would urinate on bags of barley and wheat and if they sprouted, she was likely pregnant. A 1963 study found that this was accurate ~70% of the time.
#16
TIL that Pope Innocent VIII was breastfed while he was on his deathbed, as that was the only thing he could eat or drink.
#17
TIL the vocals for the Gnarls Barley song "Crazy" (2006) were recorded in one take. Not only that, it was the first time singer CeeLo Green ever tried singing the lyrics. The song topped the charts in many countries and peaked at number two on the Billboard Hot 100.
#20
TIL Physiologist Giles Brindley, in 1983 presented his treatment for erectile disfunction by injecting himself before his talk and dropping his pants to show the crowd of urologists.
#21
TIL Sugar does not cause hyperactivity in children. This myth is based on a single 1978 study; no subsequent study has shown a relationship.
#22
TIL During the 2000's, Google, Apple, Adobe, Intel, and several other mega corporations had a mutual agreement not to hire each other's employees in order to keep salaries low. This led to a 400 mil class action lawsuit.
#24
TIL traffic roundabouts, compared to intersections with stop signs or signals, have 37% fewer overall collisions, 75% fewer injury collisions, and 90% fewer fatal collisions.
#25
TIL the car coordinator of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood managed to locate the exact 1959 Ford driven by the Manson Family, but a replica was used instead because the idea of having the real Manson car was considered too creepy.
#26
TIL that during the looting of the Chinese imperial palace at the end of the 2nd Opium War, the British soldiers took a Pekingese dog to gift to Queen Victoria. She named it "Looty".
#27
TIL Emperor Hirohito of Japan was given the original print of the Disney short Lambert the Sheepish Lion, after it was learned it was his favourite Disney film.
#28
TIL World War II codebreaker Dilly Knox used to solve coded enemy messages in the bathtub and persuaded his superiors to have a bathtub installed in his office in the cryptanalysis section of the British Admiralty.
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