In this hectic world, there’s often not much time left for ourselves. And while amid all the chaos we rarely forget to feed our bodies (and if you do, you’re having a burnout!), we often fail to think of replenishing our mind.
But the good news is, it's never too late to pump that brain muscle! So in order to nourish our curious inner child hiding deep behind first-world problems, we are about to feast on some ‘Today I Learned’ bits and pieces of information from the subreddit by the same name.
From things like how a Titanic survivor who spent 6 hours waist-deep in freezing water later won the Wimbledon Men's Doubles in 1920, and a Costa Rican fisherman becoming best friends with a crocodile after he treated it from a headshot, these are things you just don’t learn in books.
And if you’re still hungry for some more trivia facts, make sure to check out our previous TIL posts here, here and here.
This post may include affiliate links.
A local fisherman in Costa Rica nursed a crocodile back to health after it had been shot in the head, and released the reptile back to its home. The next day, the man discovered “Pocho” had followed him home and was sleeping on the man’s porch. For 20 years Pocho became part of the man’s family.
Norway hires shepherds from Nepal to build paths in the Norwegian mountains. They have completed over 300 projects, and their pay for one summer equals 30 years of work in Nepal.
Architect Alejandro Echeverri was approached by the mayor of Medellin, one of the most dangerous cities in the world, to revitalize the city. He focused on building in the poorest areas first to bring people and infrastructure into these neighborhoods. Crime dropped substantially.
Richard Norris Williams was a Titanic Survivor who spent over 6 hours waist-deep in freezing water - after rescue doctors wanted to amputate both his legs - he refused and went on to win the Wimbledon Men's Doubles in 1920.
Chemists have developed two plant-based plastic alternatives to the current fossil fuel made plastics. Using chemical recycling instead of mechanical recycling, 96% of the initial material can be recovered.
Helen Keller was accepted to Harvard in 1900. Mark Twain introduced her to Standard Oil magnate, Henry Rogers, who paid for her education. And in 1904, she became the first deaf-blind person to earn a bachelor's degree.
The oldest living elephant is Vatsala, living at an Elephant camp in a Tiger Reserve. At 105, she has lived for more than double the age of an average Asian Elephant. Though loosing her vision to Cataract, she has been able to navigate using her trunk and support from her herd members
River Phoenix passed away right before he was to film his role as the interviewer in Interview with the Vampire. The part was recast with Christian Slater, who donated his earnings to Earth Save and Earth Trust, two of Phoenix's favorite charities.
Norway discovered oil in its country 40 years ago. Knowing the oil would eventually run out, they chose to invest it in a sovereign wealth fund. It is one of the most profitable funds in the world - valued at over $1.3 trillion - enough to self sustain the county for many years.
While only 9.7% of Americans don't wear seatbelts, 47% of those who pass away in car crashes were not wearing seatbelts.
Thomas de Mahy, Marquis de Favras was a French aristocrat whose last words were "I see that you have made three spelling mistakes", upon reading his sentence warrant.
Jimmy Carter is the longest-lived president, the longest-retired president, the first president to live forty years after their inauguration, and the first to reach the age of 95.
in the original ending of the Inca-inspired animated film "The Emperor's New Groove", the titular Emperor demolishes a rainforest to create a theme park. Sting – who spent 20 years defending the rights of indigenous people – threatened to leave the project unless the ending was changed.
TIL in WWII, Major Digby Tatham-Warter led a bayonet charge while wielding an umbrella and wearing a bowler hat. He later disabled a German armored car with his umbrella. When saving the chaplain from enemy fire, he said “Don’t worry about the bullets, I’ve got an umbrella”.
A 59 yr. old woman's smartwatch correctly recognized a tachycardia, alerting her to seek help. She was diagnosed with Atrial Fibrillation and treated, reducing her chances of suffering a severe stroke. In 2017 the FDA approved the use of this technology to be used for medical purposes.
Same thing happened for my mom! I bought her a watch as a gift and 6 months later she was having surgery (when other treatments didn't work).
Florida had brought in 2 Irula tribesmen from India to catch the invasive Burmese pythons. When 1000 hunters were able to manage catching just 106 snakes, the duo caught 27 snakes in just 4 weeks, including a 16 ft long female.
The Smithsonian Museum has over 3 million 2D and 3D images that anybody can use for free for any commercial purpose.
The city of Carmel, IN has the most roundabouts per city in the US, with a total of 138. Since regular intersections were replaced with roundabouts, the number of accidents here has reduced by 40%.
The satanic temple offers academic scholarships to elementary through college students.
When the USS West Virginia battleship was finally salvaged 6 months after the attack on Pearl Harbour, a calendar was found in an air tight room where 3 trapped sailors had marked off 16 days until they passed away.
For the film Stargate, Kurt Russell was paid twice his going rate because he was the only actor at the time to have "zero unlikability" in a global poll.
In 1930, Chandra, an Indian student showed mathematically that massive stars explode into a supernova and then collapse down into neutron stars, or black holes. Before that Scientists assumed that all stars collapsed into white dwarfs. Chandra's theory was ridiculed as 'absurd'
In 1996, a Hong Kong ganster "Big spender" kidnapped the son of the richest man in Asia and demanded a ransom of $160 million for his return. After receiving the money, the gangster later phoned up and asked for advice on how to invest the money.
In 1966, Bill Cosby tried to get 16 year old folk singer Janis Ian blacklisted from tv because he thought she was a lesbian and therefore unsuited for family entertainment.
The Seiryu Miharashi station in Japan is a train station with no entrances or exits, no roads or paths to connect it, all it serves is a platform for the train passengers to step out and admire the valley
In 1927, during the worst flood in the history of the Mississippi River Valley, Herbert Hoover and the Red Cross set up "concentration camps" comprised of African Americans forced to work at gunpoint on the levee, and created a media campaign to cover it up.
From the Yale PDF many people have linked to: "Black refugees were forced to perform the heavy labor that supported the camps and were barred from escaping by National Guard members, who oversaw their work with guns at the ready. Whereas white refugees were placed in indoor facilities, black refugees were detained in outdoor camps on the levee and systematically denied adequate food and shelter, with little promise of their homes ever being rebuilt."
In east Africa, movies are often watched with a "VJ" or "video joker" who provides live narration over the movie for translation, contextualization or comedy purposes.
Introduction of iodized salt in 1920s increased national IQ average by 3.5 points in a decade and in certain states which had high levels of iodine deficiency previously, saw avg IQ increase as much as 15 points within the first decade.
Masks on airplanes generate oxygen by triggering a chemical reaction. If pressure in the cabin is disturbed and masks drop, tugging the mask causes a firing pin to ignite a small explosion in an ‘O2 candle’ where Sodium Chlorate and Potassium Percholorate combine to make Oxygen gas.
Those little firing pins in oxygen generators incorrectly marked as expired led to an explosion and deadly fire on a plane in the mid 90's. When the NTSB tried to recreate it at a NASA test facility it burned so hot it *nearly melted the measuring equipment*. (Look up ValuJet Flight 592 for the crash details).
That there were only 66 years between the first ever powered flight and the moon landing. The Wright Brothers successfully flew a plane for the first time in 1903; in 1969 Neil Armstrong was the first man on the moon.
To think of how far we've advanced over the last 100 years is absolutely mind boggling. I only wished we could have treated our planet and it's inhabitants better.
Never too late to start cleaning up the mess we've made, right? I'm continually heartened by young inventors such as Boyan Slat.
Load More Replies...
I find it mind blowing that my great grandmother was an adult at the time of the first plane flight and told us what it was like back then to hear about it happening. She also lived long enough to see Armstrong walk on the moon. Can you even wrap your head around that?
My great-grandmother grew up shooting at Indians in Oregon (1870s) and lived to see Armstrong walk on the moon.
Load More Replies...
To be fair, rockets have been around a while longer and don't fly as much as shoot through the sky. Just that people hadn't been put in them before and calculating their trajectory is challenging.
Rockets do not have much in common with planes. Compare them better with 1500 years old chinese fireworks.
I suppose conceptually, the question "can we preform a controlled flight" must precede "Can we *fly* to the moon?". And while a rocket ship is different to a biplane, it is worth mentioning that rocket powered planes were a thing in the mid point of the journey from flight to the moon.
Load More Replies...
The first space travel was in 1961 - Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin launched into space and was the first human to orbit the Earth. The first unmanned spacecraft was Sputnik in 1957- the first space station that was successful was Salyut 4 in 1974 - All were Russian.
The Wright Brother where not the first powered flight. The first powered, controlled, sustained flight took place 50 years before the Wright brothers, in 1852 (Henri Giffard flew 15 miles with a steam engine mounted on a dirigible). He went nearly 100 times as far as the Wright brothers did.
And when Lindbergh took off to fly across the Atlantic, Orville Wright was in the crowd watching, and when Armstrong lifted off in Apollo 11, Lindbergh was in the crowd watching.
It was Alberto Santos Dumont who really built a plane and did first flight. Wright Bothers just glide.
A catapult is not a plane. Santos Dumont was the first to fly a plane without any help from external forces. His plane could take off and land on its own.
And now in 10 years everything was so different ,me in 2010 will never understood why someone would do twerking online and get money
The Wright brothers weren't the first to fly a plane. People stop repeating it. It's like saying Edison invented bulb or Mother Theresa was good person
Every nation seems to claim they have the first. Who do you think made the first powered flight?
Load More Replies...
If only religion had not held science back for so very long.... just imagine where we'd be today
That's a pretty jaded response to this information. "Religion", though possibly oppressive, did not hold back science. Some leaders, certainly did, but many religious institutions founded and funded a lot of the greatest scientific institutions to this day.
Load More Replies...
In 1995 a policy known as “the Wall" was created. It discouraged info sharing between the CIA and FBI, playing a critical role in the inability to stop 9/11. It got so bad agents played a CD with Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall" into the phone as they were told their access was denied.
RIP John O’Neill -1995, O'Neill became the first agent to recognize Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda network as the single greatest terrorist threat to America. He campaigned relentlessly for increased cooperation between the CIA, the FBI, and U.S. and foreign governments, and made decisions that would change the face of counterterrorism. O'Neill won the respect of many powerful figures around the world and earned a legendary reputation as a bon vivant, an innovative leader, and a bridge builder of important alliances. But O'Neill's confident, charming public persona belied several professional disappointments and the growing strain of secretly maintaining a complex web of romantic relationships. When the FBI and the U.S. government continued to disregard his calls to connect the terror trail to bin Laden and his associates, O'Neill became even more disillusioned and ultimately resigned his post at the FBI. Just days later, John O'Neill perished helping others to safety on September 11
A British man was surprised at being urgently contacted by the NHS about his health, when they calculated his BMI as being 28,000. They'd written his 6'2" height as being 6.2cm tall
The same enzyme that makes apples and potatoes turn brown is also responsible for tanning in humans.
Arthur Tudor, the older brother of Henry VIII, exchanged letters with his fiancée, Catherine of Aragon, in Latin. When they met in person they were unable to communicate however, as they had mastered different pronunciations of the language.
"Unable to communicate" why didn't they just write notes to each other?
Bronze medal Olympian, UFC champion and WWE wrestler Ronda Rousey used to be a moderator on a Pokemon forum, in her bio it said "I also spend a lot of time doing judo... right now I'm ranked #1 under 20, if you don't believe me look it up"
There was an infamous game of roulette played in Monte-Carlo on August 18, 1913, where the ball fell on black 26 times in a row. Gamblers lost millions expecting it to land on red along the way, making "the gambler's fallacy" famous.
In 2018, a woman accidentally paid a Swiss cafe $7709 for coffee because she entered her PIN number as the dollar amount. When she called to get the money back, nobody answered because the cafe had filed for bankruptcy.
There is a breed of horse called the Yakutian that is native to Siberia. Bulkier than other horse breeds, it has a extremely long hair for its coat and can withstand temperatures as low a -70C (-94F)
The Tour de France has a team that drives each days route and turns genitals graffitied on the road into owls and butterflies.
Thomas Linley was called "The English Mozart". Mozart called him "a true genius" and said "he would have been one of the greatest", but he drowned in a lake at age 22 and most of compositions were lost or burned in a fire.
This is a fact that I know to be true a d love. On his Dangerous album, the Michael Jackson song 'Keep It In The Closet', features a females voice singing along. In the video it has Naomi Campbell miming along. But the actual singer was Princess Stephanie of Monaco.
Also a fun fact, the entire Thriller album was tracks laid down by the bassist and guitarist from TOTO, right after they released TOTO IV
Load More Replies...
On a timeline, the T-Rex is closer to an iPhone than to a stegosaurus.
Today I learned, yet again, that humans don't do much thinking. Or fact-checking. Never trust "facts" that can be summed up on a bumper sticker unless it's E=mc2 ==== my gramps
Any in particular? I looked a couple up that I found suspicious and they were legit (e.g. calendar on the sunken ship, number of roundabouts in an American town).
Load More Replies...
This is a fact that I know to be true a d love. On his Dangerous album, the Michael Jackson song 'Keep It In The Closet', features a females voice singing along. In the video it has Naomi Campbell miming along. But the actual singer was Princess Stephanie of Monaco.
Also a fun fact, the entire Thriller album was tracks laid down by the bassist and guitarist from TOTO, right after they released TOTO IV
Load More Replies... On a timeline, the T-Rex is closer to an iPhone than to a stegosaurus.
Today I learned, yet again, that humans don't do much thinking. Or fact-checking. Never trust "facts" that can be summed up on a bumper sticker unless it's E=mc2 ==== my gramps
Any in particular? I looked a couple up that I found suspicious and they were legit (e.g. calendar on the sunken ship, number of roundabouts in an American town).
Load More Replies...