What’s on the agenda today, pandas? Perhaps you’re working, doing some laundry, going for a run and calling your parents to check in on them. And while you’re being so productive, you might as well squeeze in some time for learning too!
Below, we’ve gathered a list of fun facts that have recently been shared on the Today I Learned subreddit. 5 minutes from now, you’ll have plenty more information to share with friends and family members, and you’ll know even more about the world. Keep reading to also find a conversation with Jake Olefsky, CEO of Braingle.com, and be sure to upvote the facts you’re glad to have learned today!
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That Wimbledon umpires learn a vast array of swear words in many different languages in order to flag, and subsequently fine, any athlete to break the no swearing rule.
So my collection of swear words in different languages might actually come in handy?
Of Alice Kober, who helped decipher an ancient script known as Linear B. Over 20 years, she meticulously recorded her research in a collection of 180,000 index cards. The script was deciphered in 1952, shortly after her death. It remains the only Bronze Age Aegean script that is readable now.
It was a great intellectual feat. It is one of several bronze age scripts that have been deciphered.
Irish Supreme Court doesn't classify Subway bread as bread, but instead as cake because of its sugar content.
To learn more about the wonderful world of fun facts, we reached out to the CEO of Braingle.com, Jake Olefsky, who was kind enough to have a chat with Bored Panda. "Sharing fun facts is amazing because you can surprise someone and teach them something new at the same time," he shared. "They are good conversation starters!"
We were also curious about Jake's favorite fun facts. "My favorite is the one that I have most recently learned, so it changes constantly," he revealed. "Today, I learned that a stadium-sized comet is going to whizz past the earth this week! Hopefully it won't hit us."
About Deborah Sampson. She disguised herself as a man so she could join the Continental Army and fight in the Revolutionary war. She was shot twice but fearing someone would find out her secret she removed one of the balls with a penknife and carried the other bullet in her leg her whole life.
The name of Ishi, known as the 'last wild indian' is an adopted name. In the Yahi culture, he one cannot speak his own name until introduced by another Yahi. When asked his name, he said: "I have none, because there were no people to name me".
William Wrigley initially offered free baking powder as a gift for his soap but the powder turned out to be more popular. He switched to selling the powder and added sticks of gum as a gift. The gum became incredibly popular thus forcing him to switch and became the world's leading gum company.
As for the trivia and fun facts you'll find on Braingle, Jake says it's supplied by the site's users. "Anyone can create their own trivia quiz on any topic that they are interested in," he told Bored Panda.
"Of course, we have a review process where editors fact-check each question and proofread it for errors," Jake added. "If you are an expert in some subject, please come and make a quiz on it to share with the world."
A 2013 survey, involving 1,081 doctors regarding advance end-of-life directives, found that 88.3% said they would choose do-not-resuscitate or "no code" orders for themselves.
That the "dumb" in dumbbells originally meant "mute". A "dumb" bell was a contraption used to train church bell ringers in the fine art of bell ringing without annoying the entire neighborhood. Later, because of the similarities in shape, the name was applied to certain exercise equipment.
About 100,000 people died each year in India due to the collapse of vulture populations. Vultures were crucial to the ecosystem & their near extinction due to accidental poisoning extended the presence of animal carcasses in the local environment, increasing rabies & reducing water quality.
Jake also says it's important to be a lifelong learner "because it keeps your brain in shape, so you can stay sharp as you age."
"It also makes you a more interesting person to be around, so you'll make more friends. Just remain curious and try to learn something new every day," he added. "Come to Braingle.com to take a trivia quiz on a wide range of topics, or create your own quiz on anything that you are interested in."
There is a excerpt from John Adam's diary where he describes the time he had to share a tiny bed with Benjamin Franklin and, instead of sleeping, they had an argument about whether to keep the windows open or closed. Franklin eventually won the argument when Adams got too tired and fell asleep.
That 55% of YA readers are actually adults.
A lot of adults also watch Bluey, so I can't say I'm surprised.
Because sometimes you want to read a story with a more optimistic view. The adult books tend to have a depressing end. You just want to read something fun.
Because - when it comes to fantasy - it's hard finding adult fiction.
What do you mean? There's libraries full of it!
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Young adult is like 15-18 - so just past the tween and early teen stage and old enough to have an adult conversation but still young enough to enjoy pretend and childlike fantasy still
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I spend so much of my time on here looking up abbreviations these days...does nobody use words?
I thought I was the only one! Had to scroll through the comments to figure out what the hell "YA" was. Everything is not an abbreviation, it's hard and annoying to keep up, and I'm not even an old boomer dude.
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We adult long time readers of good SF Fantasy have been totally disappointed with the flooding of the genre by wishy washy watered down regurgitated themes in the name of YA fiction. A marketing bandwagon flooded by publishers using second rate writers. Young adults deserve better too.
Yup, with fantasy too, give me a Diana Wynne Jones YA book over almost any of the current crop of fantasy books
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What's the meaning of YA? Pleeeeeeaaaaase, write the actual words. Many people here are non-native English speakers, from a lot of different countries, and it's really annoying.
I almost exclusively read YA fiction. Deals with interesting topics without the need to include voyeuristic misogynistic descriptions of women's bodies, dead or alive that a lot of the so called adult books go for!
I think there are only two kinds of books: good books and bad books. If it's well written and the story is coherent, all the other "labels" are irrelevant.
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I once interviewed an SFF writer known for YA (and yes, a large adult readership). He suggested YA is best thought of as referring to the protagonists. That makes the books relatable to younger readers, of course - but it doesn't eradicate the interest for other, older readers. Not all YA is immature writing (and a lot of stuff for older readers *is*).
Which author? I wholeheartedly agree with him. It sounds like something Scott Westerfeld would say.
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A book's a book! I read whatever makes me happy. Life's too short to read books you don't like.
Pandas, I'ma blow your collective minds. A 13yoa young man from Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, just had published a brilliant graphic novel, entitled "Kings of Quests: A Tale of Bros". His name is Miles Asberry-Wallace. He's a seventh grade student. Did the art, the story, all out of his head. It's about young 14/15yoa black boys that meet in a woods, and want to be kings. If written by an adult, this would be lauded as a brilliant piece of work. Author is 13yoa.
I encourage everyone, all Pandas, to support this young man. Strive Books is a source. The story involves early teens and was written by a 13yr old. Don't let that put you off. It's every bit as well written and conceived as a Phillip Pullman book. Please, Pandas, support young authors.
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Anyone under the age of 25 is a young adult. Still demographically adults.
Appropiate art shouldn't have an age limit - a lot of people also like My Little Pony
Spongebob... My Little Pony... There are many examples. And so what.
I'm on that list. I like Sci-fi/fantasy. There are very few classified as not YA. Almost every other genre in fiction has a kind of reading range.
Good stories (and TV programmes!) have no age limit. A good story is a good story!
just talking to my daughter-in-law about the fact that we both like reading YA stories!
YA? I find these abbreviations annoying, only for insiders. i am outside
As a 67 year old with Anxiety, I am grateful for YA stories that are interesting without being too stressful. <3
Are we not constantly told that "YA" is, at best, the reading level of most American high school graduates?
Imagine the sort of clowns that gatekeep YA fiction. There are adults now who never read Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys or Encyclopedia Brown. I'd bet they would love it.
Does anyone know where that statistic comes from? I would quote it if I could back it up. I am an elder woman who catches flack for reading "kiddie lit."
I am one of them. I never stopped reading these books as I grew up. There are some phenomenal YA authors.
And the books have lgbt characters unlike many adult books
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Many people hear voices and music in white noise. This is known as auditory pareidolia or “musical ear syndrome.”
The USA federal witness protection program has a 100% success rate for those who follow their guidelines.
And if they “lose” you they just claim that you didn’t follow their guidelines;)
That birds can get divorced. Over 90% of avian species form socially monogamous pair bonds, but they may end the bonds by 're-mating' with a different partner after so-called 'divorce'. Divorce rate increases with male promiscuity and migration distance.
So humans aren't the only ones...I'm not sure if I should be happy or sad about this.
Horses went extinct in North America about 10,000 years ago. They were then reintroduced to the continent by the Spanish as early as the 1550s.
Which is funny because I know several Americans who act like they invented horses from scratch. Yellowstone culture is real.
The first and last fatalities of building the Hoover Dam were a father and his son. They died on the same day, 14 years apart.
Of the 5 known assassination attempts on Queen Elizabeth II, the one that came closest to succeeding was attempted by a 17-year-old New Zealander, who shot at her with a .22 calibre rifle, but missed so badly that nobody even realised shots were fired.
I know people have a lot of strong opinions on the monarchy but I think QE2 was a boss & was always impressed by her quiet fortitude.
That due to very poor consumer reviews and negative media attention in 2014, Haribo discontinued sugar free gummy bears. The gummy bears contained maltitol, a sugar alcohol that is not fully digestible and that ferments in the gut. It can cause increased flatulence, loose stools, and diarrhea.
North American porcupines love salt and are known to eat backpackers’ road salt-covered boots left outside tents.
Over 98% of Korean households have a special kimchi fridge
According to Google: They're specially designed to keep different kinds of kimchi at optimal temperatures and humidities without mixing their unique flavors and odors.
Grasshopper are nearly 200 million years older than grass.
That WHAM-O's Slip N' Slide is not supposed to be used by persons over the age of 12. There have been rare instances (and lawsuits) of adults breaking their necks while using it and in 1993, the U.S. CPSC warned that the slide might cause permanent spinal cord injury to teens and adults.
Gee, who would have thought throwing yourself on the ground at a dead run could cause spinal cord and neck injuries? 🤔
That famed scientist George Washington Carver had a respiratory infection in his youth which him with an unusually high pitched voice that “startled all who met him.”
Incredible guy. Invented and patented several things that we us today. The most popular being peanut butter.
That camouflage clothing is illegal for civilians in several countries.
Until 2001 workers at Disneyland had to wear "communal underwear" while in character because normal undies would bunch up and become visible. After several outbreaks of pubic lice, the performers got the Teamsters Union involved and Disney finally agreed to employees wearing their own underpants.
From the 1950s to 1970s, attempts were made at running bus services between London and India. The trip took about 50 days, cost about $100, and buses are said to have included private bunks and even a kitchen.
The Old London Bridge was crowded with houses and shops, some of them reaching up to 6 storeys in height.
Americans have a distinctive lean and it’s one of the first things the CIA trains operatives to fix.
That there are over two dozen universities in the U.S. that have their own nuclear reactors.
That the world’s largest kidney stone, removed from a patient in Sri Lanka, weighed 1.67 lbs (757.5g) and broke 2 world records.
That Titan’s surface organics surpass oil reserves on Earth. Saturn’s moon Titan has hundreds of times more liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth, according to Cassini data.
Surprised B.P., ExxonMobil & Nestlé haven't found a way to monetize this. I'm sure they're working on it.
There's a rare disorder called Epidermodysplasia Verruciformis, turning people's skin into tree-like bark with wart growths due to HPV. Also known as "Tree Man Illness," the disorder is inherited when an individual inherits one copy, from each parent, of a defective gene.
That the Beijing Weather Modification Office were enlisted by the Chinese government to ensure that the 2008 Summer Olympics were free of rain, by breaking up clouds headed towards the capital and forcing them to drop rain on outlying areas instead.
Alexander Hamilton was the first major American politician publicly involved in a sex scandal. He had an affair with 23-year-old Maria Reynolds, whose husband was aware of the infidelity and likely orchestrated the whole thing to regularly extort blackmail money from Hamilton.
That when Charles Guiteau bought the gun he would use to assassinate President Garfield, he chose one with a more expensive ivory handle, thinking it would look better in a museum. Though the gun was given to the Smithsonian, it has since been lost.
He and all those like home should have their name list and just be known as twenty alpha numeric identifiers. So they get no notoriety or remembrance.
That China, by a large margin, consumes the most salt per citizen.
Sigmund Freud dissected hundreds of eels in search of the male sex organs. He had to concede failure in his first major published research paper, and turned to other issues in frustration.
That Tex-Mex has surpassed Italian as the most popular food genre in the United States.
Ironic granted the xenophobia of immigrants either from Mexico or coming through Mexico. “Love their food! Hate them.”
About Kitty Fisher, who was famous for simply for being famous. In one incident, she fell off her horse while riding and exposed herself. Broadsheets & prints mocked her, but she seized the attention for herself by having her portrait painted by England's most prominent painter.
That the Rambo lunchbox by Thermos in 1985 marked the end of the metal lunchbox era. Manufacturers switched to making lunchboxes with plastic because it was cheaper and because a group of mothers in Florida complained that metal lunchboxes were being used by children as weapons.
About "Cool Japan", a Japanese government initiative since 2010 that aims to promote Japan's attractiveness abroad. It does this by focusing on the aspects of Japanese culture that non-Japanese people find "cool" such as anime, games, cuisine etc.
I’m just saying why don’t we have vending machines for everything yet??? Let’s import that stat.
That Otto Von Bismarck managed a posthumous snub of Wilhelm II, by having his own sarcophagus inscribed with the words, “A loyal German servant of Emperor Wilhelm I”.
During his Flight School basketball camp in 2016, Michael Jordan was challenged by Chris Paul to a shooting drill where if Jordan missed three shots, the campers would all receive free Air Jordans. Jordan accepted and made every shot.
The psychiatrist Henry Cotton would sometimes extract all of a patient's teeth as he believed infected teeth to be the cause of psychiatric disorders. If that didn't work, he'd remove testicles, ovaries, gall bladders, stomachs, spleens, cervixes and colons.
That pro bowling balls have specially shaped "weight blocks" inside them to change how the ball curves.
That among all civilian jobs in in the US, workers spend on average more than 60% of their workday standing.
The NASA plans to decomission the ISS by 2031, via controlled re-entry on the pacific ocean.
That "The Iodine State" was South Carolina's nickname in the 1930s and even on license plates, in an effort to promote the state's vegetables as having more healthy iodine than other other state's vegetables.
George Washington prevented a military coup over unpaid back wages by putting on a pair of glasses to read a letter from Congress, explaining he was "almost blind in the service of my country.” Moved to tears, his officers compromised.
Former NBA Star Dwight Howard Ate 5,500 Calories in Candy Every Day for a Decade. Howard was consuming the amount of sugar equivalent to 24 chocolate bars every day.
