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38 Intriguing Facts Covering History, Nature, and Science
With unlimited access to the digital world at our fingertips, it’s virtually impossible to avoid learning new information every day. And why should we? We're well aware of the evidence that discovering something new is an incredible way to improve our life. From stretching our thinking in different directions to keeping our minds sharp, exercising our brains lets us make sense of ourselves and our surroundings.
But if you feel that the amount of information floating around makes it hard to know where to start, then you’re in luck. There’s an impressive corner on Reddit aptly titled 'Today I Learned' where people do the heavy lifting and scour the internet for the most fascinating and captivating facts.
This subreddit is home to 27.6 million curious members who waste no time in sharing tasty bites of knowledge they recently found with everyone online. To celebrate their efforts, we at Bored Panda compiled a new TIL selection right below, so continue scrolling and let us know which ones you enjoyed most! And if you’re ready to gain even more precious wisdom, check out our previous TIL posts right here, here, and here.
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#1
TIL about the Horse, Sergeant Reckless. A Horse who served with the marines in Korea. She was able to haul ammunition by herself without a handler, would seek a bunker or lay down when under fire and received two purple hearts as well as other medals for her service in the Korean war
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#2
TIL A turkish mother that read lecture notes for four years to her blind daughter in law school, has been awarded an honorary degree with the daughter
Discovering something novel is as easy as tapping on a few hyperlinks on our screens, right? But we should still remain skeptical and take things found online with a pinch of salt. After all, anyone can say anything on the internet, so we need to put our fact-checking caps on to understand whether the information we consume is genuinely true.
Luckily for us, moderators of the TIL subreddit make sure that the facts posted on the group are grounded in reality. Their rules state that the subreddit removes posts that are "inaccurate/unverifiable/not supported by source." The moderators require to "link directly to a reliable source that supports every claim in your post title." Moreover, the online group does not support personal opinions and subjective posts, as well as asks their community members to avoid sharing misleading claims: "Posts that omit essential information, or present unrelated facts in a way that suggest a connection will be removed."
#3
TIL in 1908, the NYT reported a story on a dog that would push kids into the Seine in order to earn beefsteak treats for “rescuing” them
To find out more about navigating the learning experience and the best practices to make new information stick, we reached out to Nate Kornell, Ph.D., a professor of cognitive psychology at Williams College. He has spent years researching students’ beliefs about how they should study and the learning strategies that actually work best.
While the TIL subreddit proves that the internet is a great tool to accelerate our critical thinking by always letting us uncover something new, we can feel overwhelmed by the never-ending collection of specific facts shared by people online. If you feel bombarded by immense amounts of information daily, he suggested focusing on things you want to learn more about. "Too often, we spend our time on things we already know a lot about. Mix it up!"
#5
TIL The Wright Brothers only flew together on the same flight one time, a six-minute flight on May 25th, 1910. They promised their father, Milton, they would never fly together to avoid the chance of a double tragedy and to ensure one brother would remain to continue their flight experiments
#7
TIL that "Old Book Smell" is caused by lignin — a compound in wood-based paper — when it breaks down over time, it emits a faint vanilla scent
We have long heard about the benefits of learning fascinating bits of information. According to the professor, "Learning new things doesn't give your brain more horsepower, but it does make you smarter. The more you learn, the easier it becomes to learn more."
"We build knowledge frameworks in our minds, and adding to them makes them stronger. For example, if you know the NBA well, learning a new fact about the NBA (Jokic was MVP again) is a lot easier than if you don't," Kornell told Bored Panda.
#8
TIL that Alice Munro, co-founder of a bookstore with her then-husband Jim, started writing after reading some of the store's stock and thinking "I can write better books than this." In 2013, she won the Nobel Prize in Literature
#9
TIL Captain Robert Campbell whilst a prisoner of the Germans in WW1 asked the Kaiser to visit his dying mother in England. Surprisingly he was given permission, provided he returned to prison afterwards. He did
#10
TIL that by letting a wolf population recover, traffic collisions caused by deer are reduced by nearly 25%; the reduction is not based as much on the decimation of the deer population but on the “landscape of fear” created by the wolves
Keeping our brains active can improve our memory, concentration, attention to detail, and can also fight against dementia, so it’s very important to get our minds going. "But your brain will be active if you're working, going to school, having conversations, and so on," the professor explained. "If you're relatively isolated or bored — which can happen especially as we reach old age — scheduling activities to keep mentally active is a good idea."
However, always coming across something exciting and unfamiliar can make us push our old interests to the side. But bringing back our rusty skills or engaging more in the already existing knowledge also keeps our brains healthy. "The best time to do a deep dive is whenever you get super interested in something and you don't already know all about it. If you're learning, then keep it up!"
#11
TIL that the new Rolls-Royce Ghost soundproofing was so overengineered that occupants in the car found the near-total silence disorienting, and some felt sick. Acoustic engineers had to go back and work on "harmonizing" various sounds in the car to add a continuous soft whisper
#12
TIL That the hair style Princess Leia wears in Star Wars, was inspired by women of the Mexican Revolution, most notably, guerrilla fighter Clara de la Rocha
#13
TIL in 2011, a 29-year-old Australian bartender found an ATM glitch that allowed him to withdraw way beyond his balance. In a bender that lasted four-and-half months, he managed to spend around $1.6 million of the bank’s money
Moreover, if you consume too many facts at once, you may feel a bit swamped. This does beg the question, what’s the point in learning it all if we’re not going to remember it later? According to Kornell, the best way to make information stick is to revisit it multiple times. "And don't do it all at once; if you can wait a few days before revisiting information, your memory strength will benefit a lot from looking at that information again," he suggested.
#14
TIL about Jean Boulet who in 1972 set the world record for the highest altitude reached in a helicopter, 40,280ft. During descent his engines failed, and he landed the helicopter without power, setting another record in the process for the highest unpowered helicopter landing
#15
TIL every year at 3 p.m. on Christmas Eve, the 1958 special 'Donald Duck and His Friends Wish You a Merry Christmas' is screened on Sweden's main channel. Swedes are so compelled by the cartoon that last year during the program, cell data usage fell 28% and calls to emergency services dropped 16%
#16
TIL when you see actors smoking cigarettes in movies, they’re often smoking “Herbal Cigarettes” which contain other plants like lettuce or tea leaves instead of tobacco
"I have published studies where we asked people to predict how much they could learn by studying. The results are quite clear and consistent: People underestimate how much they can learn. And how much they can improve in general," the professor told Bored Panda.
"For example, if we asked participants how well they would do on a test if they got to study four times, they predicted a level of performance far worse than how they actually did on the test," he continued. "Our data shows that it's never too late to learn something new — and happily, learning new things is usually easier than you think!"
#17
TIL Cato once believed he caught Caesar reading a note implicating himself in a conspiracy to assassinate Cicero during a session of the Senate. Forcing the note to be read to the Senate, it turned out to be a love letter from his own sister to Caesar who had slept w her the night before
#18
TIL when one adventurer drove a Jeep Wrangler to the world record altitude of 6,646 m, he left a sign saying "Jeep Parking Only: All others don't make it up here anyway.". The next record breakers, who had a Suzuki Samurai and climbed up to 6,688 m on the same volcano, removed that sign
#19
TIL that Toyota is headquartered in the city of Toyota, Japan and was founded there, but is not named after the city. In fact, the city (originally called Koromo) renamed itself after the company in 1959, because Toyota had become so famous
#20
TIL: The Coconut Monk was a pacifist mystic who founded the Coconut Religion in Vietnam. He lived on an island, meditated in a palm tree for hours every day, had a cat and mouse as his companions, made shards of bombs into a gong, and went to prison for his opposition to the Vietnam War
#21
TIL in 2013, JCPenney sold a stainless steel tea kettle that attracted controversy due to its perceived resemblance to Adolf Hitler
#22
TIL 12% of the world's total languages are found in Papua New Guinea, which has over 820 indigenous languages. There are more languages on this island than in any other country
#23
TIL in 2000, an art exhibition in Denmark featured ten functional blenders containing live goldfish. Visitors were given the option of pressing the “on” button. At least one visitor did, killing two goldfish. This led to the museum director being charged with and, later, acquitted of animal cruelty
#24
TIL A killing committed on an iceberg outside of any country's territorial waters led to such a massive kerfuffle over the questions of jurisdiction and who had the right to try the defendant that it is being examined as a possible case study in the event [end] occurs in outer space
#26
TIL that Hans Zimmer deliberately used a broken piano for the score of Guy Ritchie's "Sherlock Holmes" to make it sound like something you would hear in a pub
#27
TIL that Daniel Inouye, who served 50 years in the U.S. Senate, destroyed three German machine gun nests in a single assault in the WWII Italian Campaign. The third nest was destroyed after Inouye grabbed a live grenade from his severed right hand and threw it through the firing slit with his left
#28
TIL Mini pigs aka Teacup pigs are a hoax. They are just potbellied pigs that have been underfed to stunt their growth and will eventually grow to weigh 100-150 pounds
#29
TIL about Jon Lech Johansen, a self-trained software engineer who created software that decoded DVD copy protection. Johansen defended himself against computer hacking charges, arguing he didn't access anyone else's information: he owned the DVDs. He was acquitted in 2003
#30
TIL the first reality show was 1973’s An American Family documenting the life of a family, but ended up breaking it up – 10 million people watched as mom Pat complained about husband Bill’s cheating, moaned about their [intimacy] life and then, midway through filming, asked him for a divorce on camera
#31
TIL about the Financial Modeling World Cup, which is essentially the World Cup for Competitive excel users. Participants solve real-life case studies by building financial models in Microsoft Excel. $25,000 prize fund
#32
TIL that January is the first month of the Gregorian calendar because it is named after the roman god of all beginnings, Janus
#33
TIL that after 5 Tamil chiefs defeated the Sri Lankan king Valagamba, one of them became king but was eventually slain by another, who also became king before being slain by another, and so on until only one remained, then Valagamba returned, slew the last one and took back his throne
#34
TIL the reason why coffee makes you p**p is because caffeine activates contractions in your colon and intestinal muscles
#35
TIL it took an Iowa man named Otto Frederick Rohwedder some 16 years to perfect and sell the first bread-slicing machine. A prototype made in 1912 was destroyed in a fire, and he didn't sell his first slicing machine until 1928. Within 5 years, 80% of bread sold in the U.S. was pre-sliced
#36
TIL that one of the earliest recorded variations of classic dad phrase "Women: can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em" is found in a speech from 102 B.C. by Roman Censor Q. Caecilius Metellus Numidicus, in a speech that would be repeated by Caesar Augustus nearly a century later
#37
TIL that the 2014 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to the three men who invented the blue LED. Until their discovery in the 90s, white LED lights couldn't be produced
#38
TIL that when his film Uncut Gems began to receive critical acclaim, Adam Sandler threatened the world with making "the worst movie ever" if he did not receive a nomination for Best Actor at the Oscars. He was not nominated
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