From endless, scrollable feeds to high speed internet, these days, many of us might take it for granted that you can literally, at the push of a button, see a whole host of new information every single second of the day. If that sounds overwhelming, do not fear, helpful netizens are out there to filter and share the best bits.
We’ve gathered another dose of interesting and novel “today I learned” facts to impress at dinner parties and dominate at trivia games. So get comfortable as you scroll though, upvote the things you learned and be sure to comment your thoughts and experiences below.
#1
Castrated men do not go bald. Balding is caused by sex hormones which castrated men do not produce.
Image credits: ImJoeKing77
#2
Spartan law forbade the marriage of a girl until she was in her late teens or early 20s. The reasons were to ensure the birth of healthy children; and to spare women the risks and lifelong health damage associated with adolescent pregnancy.
Image credits: Puzzleheaded-Cat4647
#3
In 2020, five Lithuanian soldiers went missing during a graduation exam. Thinking the exercise was still ongoing, they successfully evaded all attempts to find them. A military spokesman said their performance was “exemplary.”
Image credits: Ok-Indication-5121
Sometimes the world can seem like a pretty scary place. Other times, just the sheer volume of information is enough to make people resist casually searching for things or ideas. After all, most sites are unwaveringly aggressive in throwing words and provocative images at you, while other times things get lost in the deluge of “breaking news.”
So, to beat back the doldrums, here are some bits of good news just from this May (2024): firstly, for the first time perhaps ever, over 30% of all global electricity is made using renewable energy.
#4
Benjamin Franklin used to sit around naked for extended periods to take air baths.
#5
The common plastic garden chair is called a “Monobloc” chair, and was once banned in Switzerland for polluting the cityscape.
Image credits: Thomas_Catthew
#6
A man died in the lighthouse he built. Henry Winstanley was so confident in the lighthouse’s design that he wished to be inside during “the greatest storm there ever was”. The lighthouse was completely destroyed in the Great Storm of 1703, killing Winstanley.
Image credits: TMWNN
If that’s not enough, an often understated part of constant medical improvements worldwide is the fact that more and more mothers survive childbirth. Over the last two decades, maternal mortality rates have been cut in half as medical knowledge and experience becomes better distributed across the globe.
#7
Menstruation is actually very rare in mammals. Other than humans, only 9 primate species, 4 bat species, the elephant shrew, and one species of mouse menstruate. All other female mammals reabsorb their uterine lining, rather than shed it.
Image credits: MaroonTrucker28
#8
Amelia Earhart had a copilot when she disappeared, his name was Fred Noonan.
Image credits: aomusik
#9
Multiple studies have found that an extra inch of height can be worth an extra $1,000 a year in wages both for men and women.
Image credits: LeftNeck9994
But wait, there’s more! While it might not be nearly as exciting, a group of Cambridge University scientists have developed a way to make carbon neutral cement. Maybe this is a bit, if you will pardon the pun, dry, but making even the act of building more sustainable is an important step for the future. After all, look around you, cement is everywhere!
#10
Egyptian builders such as those of the pyramids were usually not slaves, and frequently took sick days from work. Popular excuses included “stung by scorpion”, “bleeding wife”, “trouble with eye”, and even “brewing beer”.
Image credits: Chemical-Elk-1299
#11
Madonna turned down a role in The Matrix, one of the biggest regrets of her career.
Image credits: MyLovelyGemma
#12
Rachel McAdams who plays 17 year old Regina George was 25 years old at the time. Her mother on film Amy Poehler was was only 8 years older at 33.
Image credits: Sal21G
Last, but not least, again in the UK, scientists have developed a form of gene therapy that might be able to restore hearing to some forms of deafness. This comes after a trial of the treatment that helped return hearing to 18 month old UK toddler, Opal Sandy. Once perfected, this method could be applied to a great number of conditions.
#13
Scientists have been communicating with apes via sign language since the 1960s; apes have never asked one question.
#14
Apple designs and tests its product boxes so that they open at just the right speed.
Image credits: Brix001
#15
If you carve something into a tree, it’ll still be at the same height 50 years later.
Image credits: katxwoods
#16
A 2022 survey of 3,000 adults & children found that just 27% of children (ages 6-16) said they regularly play outside their homes, whereas, 71% of the baby boomer generation said they did when they were children (80% for those ages 55-64).
#17
Only three objects have ever been found inside the Great Pyramid of Giza- pieces of wood, a ball made of diorite, and a copper hook. They were found in 1872 in a shaft leading from the Queen’s Chamber.
Image credits: Astro_gamer_caver
#18
Sylvester Stallone asked Survivor to write the song Eye of the Tiger because Queen wouldn’t let him use Another One Bites the Dust.
#19
There have been multiple attempts to privatize the National Weather Service and charge for weather data that is currently in the public domain.
#20
Yellowstone’s famed thermal pools can melt flesh and bone. In 2016, a tourist illegally searching for a swimmable hot spring fell into a portion of the Norris Geyser Basin, where his body was dissolved by the boiling, highly acidic water. His wallet and shoes were all that remained of him.
#21
In 2020 Cambridge University Library announced that two notebooks written by Charles Darwin, “worth many millions of pounds”, had been missing for 20 years & had likely been stolen. One of the notebooks contains Darwin’s famous Tree of Life sketch that explores the relationship between species.
#22
There were 12 confirmed dogs on the Titanic and 3 of them survived.
#23
Spain currently has a lower fertility rate than Japan.
#24
The famous “We Can Do It!” poster was barely known during WWII. It was displayed for two weeks as part of a series of posters to boost worker morale in one company’s factories. It remained virtually unknown until the 1980s when it was rediscovered in an article about the National Archives.
#25
Helium was detected on the sun before it was detected on Earth. That’s why it was named for Helios, the Greek god of the sun.
#26
Celine Dion represented Switzerland in the 1988 Eurovision Contest and won, even through she was a French-Canadian.
#27
In 2022, Crypto.com accidentally refunded a customer over $10 Million—they accidentally entered the account number as the refund amount. It took 7 months for them to notice. The recipient was arrested and spent over 200 days in custody.
Image credits: itsbunpen
#28
Cars must have at least three-quarters of a tank in order to leave Singapore, in order to stop them from buying cheaper gas in Malaysia and circumventing Singapore’s gas tax.
Image credits: Brix001
#29
Obelisk, a Queen’s Guard horse, who used to lure pigeons to him by dropping oats from his mouth. When they came close, he would stomp them to death. He was eventually taken for additional ‘psychological training’.
Image credits: -Ash-Ketchup-
#30
EA makes $420 millon/year off of the Sims 4.
Image credits: emotional_low
#31
Most people can see their own white blood cells moving through their retinas.
Image credits: space_force_majeure
#32
Disney cofounder Roy Disney spent time with his grandchildren every week at Disneyland. Roy greeted each employee by name and picked up garbage he saw on the ground to teach them “Nobody is too good to pick up trash”.
#33
Humans are the "most sensitive" to the castor oil seeds: it takes 1 to [take out] a full grown human, 11 to [take out] a dog, and a massive dose of 80 to [take out] a duck. The seeds contain ricin which is roughly 6000 times more poisonous than cyanide.
Image credits: tyrion2024
#34
Aztecs had 18 festivities each year, 17 of which included human sacrifices. Apart from extraction of the heart, they used variety of other methods; drowning, starvation, decapitation, burning, bludgeoning, throwing from heights, forced gladiatorial combat and shooting with arrows.
#35
James Cameron offered Matt Damon 10% of “Avatar,” which would’ve earned the actor over $250 million.
#36
American composer Kevin MacLeod allows anyone to use his music for free, as long as he receives credit for the song. This has led to his music being used in thousands of films, millions of videos on YouTube.
#37
GPS, despite being free for global use, costs around $2 million a day to operate and maintain. This budget covers satellite launches and system upkeep, funded through American tax revenue.
#38
In Germany a driver’s license costs over $2000 after a minimum of 25-45 hours of professional instruction plus 12 hours of theory.
#39
“Smiley Face Theory,” which alleges that from 1990–2010, 45 young men found dead in bodies of water across the Midwest did not accidentally drown but were rather victims of a serial killer. The only known connection is grafiti depicting a “smiley face” found near at least a dozen bodies.
#40
The first female US senator, Rebecca Latimer Felton, was also the last congressperson to ever own slaves.
#41
The Nuremberg Trials executioner lied to the US Military about his prior experience. He botched a number of hangings prior to Nuremberg. The Nuremberg criminals had their faces battered bloody against the too-small trapdoor and were hung from short ropes, with many taking over 10 minutes to die.
#42
DoorDash illegally sold user information and settled for $375,000.
#43
John Krasinski fought for a deaf actress Millicent Simmonds to be cast in ‘A Quiet Place’; she taught everyone sign language on set.
#44
In 2013, a man tried to dribble a football from Seattle to Brazil to promote a charity. He was run over and killed by a truck just 250 miles into his 10,000-mile trip.
#45
No one has seen a newborn great white shark pup or birth in the wild.
#46
Male Ohio residents have to pay out-of-state tuition fees at Ohio universities if they aren’t registered with Selective Service, and some states like Alabama and Tennessee won’t admit men into state colleges at all if they haven’t registered.
#47
Globally, people average 6 hours and 58 minutes of screen time per day.
#48
*NSYNC is spelled with the last letters of the band members’ first names.
#49
US troops using flash card apps accidentally revealed classified information about nuclear weapons in Europe, such as vault locations, surveillance camera positions, signs/countersigns, and duress words.
#50
Charlize Theron’s mother shot and killed her father in self defense in front of her. Charlize would later go on to be the first person born in Africa to win an Oscar for acting.
#51
Only 37% of Rings of Power viewers completed season one domestically (45% overseas). In comparison, two cancelled shows (First Kill & Resident Evil) on another service had completion rates below 50%, but higher than ROP’s domestic figure.
#52
US airlines are legally required to refund a ticket within 24 hours of purchase, no matter if the ticket type was refundable or not.
#53
A Chinese man was thought to have died from a lightning strike until his body exploded at his cremation. A piece of metal was found leading to the discovery that a weather rocket, meant to break up hail, had failed to explode & had fallen through the man’s roof acting like a bullet, killing him.
#54
On warning of a likely missile launch against the USA, the Pentagon and Strategic Command war rooms, have one minute to brief the president, who then has roughly only six minutes to decide whether and how to respond.
#55
Sewage treatment plants are not currently designed to remove pharmaceutical drugs from water. Nor are the facilities that treat water to make it drinkable. The aquatic life, particularly fish, are shown that estrogen and chemicals that behave like it have a feminizing effect on male fish.
#56
American cigarette consumption peaked in 1963 at a yearly rate of 4,345 cigarettes per capita, or an average of nearly 12 daily cigarettes for every person in the country.
#57
‘Botanical sexism’ refers to the practice of preferentially planting cloned male plants in urban areas to avoid the litter of fruits and flowers. However, since male plants produce pollen, this can lead to high pollen levels in the air, making the area inhospitable for people with allergies.
#58
A number of people, including a group of Swedish researchers, tried to replicate the experiment shown in the documentary Super Size Me(2004). None of them were able to get the same results as the documentary creator.
#59
Ben Stiller developed the premise for Tropic Thunder while shooting Empire of the Sun. He wanted to make a film based on the actors he knew who became “self-important” & appeared to believe they had been part of a real military unit after taking part in boot camps to prepare for war film roles.
#60
When Arnold Schwarzenegger auditioned for the movie Hercules in New York (his film debut), his agent said he had years of “stage” experience, implying theater, when he had only appeared on bodybuilding stages.
#61
In 2008, Tesla took the TV series Top Gear to court for libel and malicious falsehood after it suggested one of its vehicles had run out of power after only 55 miles. The High Court of Justice in London rejected Tesla’s libel claim in 2011.
#62
19-year-old Matilda Scheurer, a Victorian-era factory worker, died after regular exposure to Scheele’s Green, a popular arsenic-based dye used in various common items at the time. She died after allegedly vomiting green, while the whites of her eyes and her fingernails turned green.
#63
The Smoky Mountains are home to a temperate rainforest on a section of the mountains near Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Worldwide, this is a very rare ecosystem that is not experienced by many other locations on earth.
#64
Las Vegas Sphere’s theater screen required such high resolution that they made the largest commercially available sensor, a 316 megapixel camera capable of 18k resolution. The image on the screen is 16K driven by 25 synchronized 4K video servers, taking up to 60GB per second of footage.
#65
Recruitment to the British Army’s Gurkha unit is extremely competitive, accepting only 230 recruits out of 28,000 applicants. All recruitment happens in Nepalese villages, and candidates must participate in a two-mile race up a steep hill, carrying 35kg of rocks in a basket.
#66
Steller’s sea cows were massive, docile animals that were exterminated less than 30 years after the species was first discovered.
#67
Lucid dreaming is a learnable skill. There are specific techniques and tips, like learning to check your reality, that can increase chances of having a lucid dream.
#68
A study found that 25% of Labrador retrievers and 66% of flat-coated retrievers possess a genetic mutation that can lead to weight gain; dogs with the gene face the “double whammy” of constant hunger while burning fewer calories. The Labrador has the highest levels of obesity among dog breeds.
#69
Polaroid camera founder Edwin Land built up a company that did about $1.4 billion of business all over the world in 1979. He never diversified into other businesses, never sold out to another company, and never borrowed money on a long-term basis.
#70
In 2013 research was conducted on Capri Sun that filtered it through a vacuum to see what would be left behind to grow on the filter paper. Researchers identified five species of fungus notating that because they don’t put preservatives in the drink, it allows lots of fungi to survive.
#71
The Apollo 15 postal covers scandal. The astronauts of Apollo 15 carried about 400 unauthorized postal covers into space and to the Moon’s surface on the Lunar Module Falcon. All three were paid/bribed $7k each by stamp dealers, got busted, and never flew in space again.
#72
In Bhutan, people do not recognize, and many do not know, their individual birthdays. Everyone in the country turns another year older together each January 1st.
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