Whenever I learn something cool, I get this itching desire to tell someone about it. But as it turns out, I don’t have to rush downstairs to interrupt whatever my flatmates are doing and bombard them with interesting yet random facts. I can do it on the Internet, too.
Today I Learned is the 11th most popular subreddit, with nearly 24 million members. All of them are ready to not only share interesting and specific things about something that they just found out but go through other people’s discoveries as well. From the reason why cops like donuts to Stephen Hawking pranking an interview crew, the subreddit has amassed loads of incredible trivia since its creation on Dec 28, 2008. Here are some of the most popular ones within the community.
#1
TIL In 1959, police were called to a segregated library in S. Carolina when a 9yr-old Black boy refused to leave. He later got a PhD in Physics from MIT, and died in 1986, one of the astronauts aboard the space shuttle Challenger. The library that refused to lend him books is now named after him.
Image credits: wikipedia
#2
TIL During an interview with Stephen Hawking, the camera operator yanked a cable causing an alarm and Hawking to slump forward. Worried they had killed him, everyone rushed over to find Hawking giggling at his own joke. The alarm was from an office computer losing power.
Image credits: biography
#3
TIL A Japanese company has awarded its non-smoking employees 6 extra vacation days to compensate for the smoker’s smoke breaks
Image credits: cnbc
#4
TIL The cast of FRIENDS each made $1M per episode in the final two seasons and now make $20M per year per cast member for reruns. The show still generates $1B/year for Warner Bros. All thanks to David Schwimmer encouraging the cast to negotiate as a team.
Image credits: cheatsheets
#5
TIL Arnold Schwarzenegger wasn’t allowed to dub his own role in Terminator in German, as his accent is considered very rural by German/Austrian standards and it would be too ridiculous to have a death machine from the future come back in time and sound like a hillbilly.
Image credits: blog.esl-languages
#6
TIL of Syndrome K: a fake disease that Italian doctors made up to save Jews who had fled to their hospital seeking protection from the Nazis. Syndrome K “patients” were quarantined and the Nazis were told that it was a deadly, disfiguring, and highly contagious illness. They saved at least 20 lives
Image credits: mentalfloss
#7
TIL that in the 1950’s, donut shops were some of the first food businesses commonly open late at night. They became hot spots for police working the night shift since it gave them a place to grab a snack, fill out paper work, or even just take a break. This is why donuts became associated with cops.
Image credits: smithsonianmag
#8
TIL actor Robert Pattinson dealt with an obsessed fan who had been camping outside his apartment by taking her out on a dinner date. “I just complained about everything in my life and she never came back.”
Image credits: today
#9
TIL a waitress was tipped a lottery ticket and won $10,000,000. She was then sued by her colleagues for their share. Then she was sued by the man who tipped her the ticket. Then she was kidnapped by her ex husband, and shot him in the chest. Then she went to court against the IRS
Image credits: al
#10
TIL Keanu Reeves often foregoes some of his paycheck so that producers can bring on other notable actors. On The Devil’s Advocate, he reduced his salary by a few million dollars so that they could afford Al Pacino, and he did the same thing on The Replacements to be able to work with Gene Hackman.
#11
TIL The ashes of Stephen Hawking were buried between the graves of Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin, in a section of Westminster Abbey known as the “Scientists Corner.” As a final tribute, during the burial, the European Space Agency beamed recordings of Hawking’s voice to the nearest black hole
#12
TIL of Dr. Donald Hopkins. He helped eradicate Smallpox, and is on the verge of killing another disease. He’s taken Guinea Worm Disease down from 3.5 million cases a year to just 28 cases last year.
Image credits: atlantamagazine
#13
TIL that everyone in Singapore above the age of 21 is automatically registered as an organ donor. Opting out from this Act will result in you being put at the very bottom of the organ priority list, should you need an organ transplantation.
Image credits: _crash182
#14
TIL hundreds of love letters between two gay World War II soldiers were found and are being made into a book. In one, one of them wrote, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if all our letters could be published in the future in a more enlightened time. Then all the world could see how in love we are.”
Image credits: mike_pants
#15
TIL: Some farmers in Bangladesh have switched to raising ducks instead of chickens, because during catastrophic floods, ducks float.
#16
TIL Dr. Phil lost his license to practise psychology in 2006. Therefore, all guests on his TV show must sign a contract stating they are only there to receive “advice” from an individual, not a psychologist.
#17
TIL when Mr Rogers heard his limo driver was going to be waiting outside while Rogers was in a meeting, he asked the driver to come in. On the way back they passed the driver’s home and Rogers asked if they could stop and meet his family. Rogers kept in touch with the driver for the rest of his life
#18
TIL about Marion Stokes, a Philadelphia woman who began taping whatever was on television in 1979 and didn’t stop until her death in 2012.. The 71,000 VHS and Betamax tapes she made are the most complete collection preserving this era of TV. They are being digitized by the Internet Archive.
#19
TIL in 1995, France found a man guilty of killing a teen girl, but he was able to avoid sentencing by hiding out in Germany. In 2009, the victim’s father hired a team to kidnap the killer out of Germany and dump him in front of a French courthouse. It worked, and he is now serving 15 years.
#20
TIL that Angelina Jolie once tried to hire a hitman to kill her, because she felt that a murder would be easier on her family than her committing suicide. The would-be-hitman talked her out of it by asking her to wait a month.
#21
TIL when Robert Ballard (professor of oceanography) announced a mission to find the Titanic, it was a cover story for a classified mission to search for lost nuclear submarines. They finished before they were due back, so the team spent the extra time looking for the Titanic and actually found it.
#22
TIL the FBI has struggled to hire hackers because of the FBI hiring rule that the applicant must not have used marijuana during the last 3 years.
Image credits: nydailynews
#23
TIL that in 1916 there was a proposed Amendment to the US Constitution that would put all acts of war to a national vote, and anyone voting yes would have to register as a volunteer for service in the United States Army
Image credits: bpbucko614
#24
TIL a fan drove three hours to deliver rapper, Boozie Badazz, a much needed dosage of insulin. She refused to accept payment and instead asked for just a photo. On her way home she stopped at a store, bought a scratch off ticket, and won $10,000.
Image credits: revolt.tv
#25
TIL Romans were known to create tombs for their dogs and gave them epitaphs to remember them by. One such inscription read, “I am in tears, while carrying you to your last resting place as much as I rejoiced when bringing you home with my own hands 15 years ago.”
Image credits: unnaturalorder
#26
TIL Carrie Fisher delivered a cow tongue inside a Tiffany box to a predatory producer who had assaulted her friend. She said, “The next delivery will be something of yours in a much smaller box!”
#27
TIL that Willie, a parrot, alerted its owner, Megan Howard, when the toddler she was babysitting began to choke. Megan was in the bathroom, the parrot began screaming “mama, baby” while flapping its wings as the child turned blue. Megan rushed over and performed the Heimlich, saving the girls life
#28
TIL BBC journalists requested an interview with Facebook because they weren’t removing child abuse photos. Facebook asked to be sent the photos as proof. When journalists sent the photos, Facebook reported the them to the police because distributing child abuse imagery is illegal
Image credits: BenChapmanOfficial
#29
TIL Canadian researchers watched 40 episodes of ‘The Dr. Oz Show’ and found that nearly 40% of the medical advice is not evidence-based, and 15% goes directly against evidence.
Image credits: truehalf
#30
TIL During the American Revolution, an enslaved man was charged with treason and sentenced to hang. He argued that as a slave, he was not a citizen and could not commit treason against a government to which he owed no allegiance. He was subsequently pardoned.
#31
TIL A man created a fake restaurant on TripAdvisor and asked around for good reviews. Eventually, the fake restaurant was the #1 restaurant in London, and was being called up 100s of times daily for bookings. For a day, the man set up a “cafe” in his backyard and served frozen food to rave reviews.
Image credits: vice
#32
TIL Kate Winslet keeps her Oscar in the bathroom so her guests can hold it and make acceptance speeches in the mirror without feeling self conscious
Image credits: DylaramaGladney
#33
TIL Michael Jordan once tipped a waitress a $5 chip for bringing him a drink. Wayne Gretzky stopped the waitress, removed the $5 chip, grabbed one of the many $100 chips on Jordan’s side of the table, and gave it to her. Then he said, “That’s how we tip in Las Vegas, Michael.”
#34
TIL a man falsely imprisoned for 10 years spent most of his time at the library to study law and prove his innocence, and then became a lawyer to help free other people who have been falsely convicted.
#35
TIL a guide dog named Roselle led a group of people including her blind owner down 78 flights of stairs before the North Tower collapsed on 9/11. She only stopped to give kisses to a woman who was having a panic attack.
#36
TIL After Col. Shaw died in battle, Confederates buried him in a mass grave as an insult for leading black soldiers. Union troops tried to recover his body, but his father sent a letter saying “We would not have his body removed from where it lies surrounded by his brave and devoted soldiers.”
#37
TIL that millennial dads are spending 3 times as much times with their kids than their fathers spent with them. Back in 1982, 43% of fathers admitted they’d never changed a diaper. Today, that number is down to about 3%
#38
TIL many doctors have stopped calling cancer treatment a “fight” or “battle”. They argue these terms misrepresent how treatment works and if treatments fail, the patient is left with guilt and a false belief they didn’t “fight” hard enough
#39
TIL there was an early 1900s act named “Sober Sue”, who’s draw was she never smiled. A theater offered $1000 to any one who could make her laugh, attracting big comedians. Crowds came out to watch them try, and fail, giving them a free show. Later it came out that Sue suffered from facial paralysis.
#40
TIL an actor in Nazi Germany lost his job for being Jewish. He went to the Alps, grew a beard, and dyed all his hair by bathing in diluted hydrogen. He returned to the stage claiming to be a self-taught peasant actor and was praised by the Nazis as “proof of the superiority of Aryan blood.”
#41
TIL Six Georgia inmates out on work detail saved a Deputy Sheriff who collapsed unconscious. They could have taken his gun & fled with the work van but used the Deputy’s phone to call 911. The Sheriff’s Office gave the men a pizza party with homemade dessert & recommended reduced sentences.
#42
TIL planned obsolescence is illegal in France; it is a crime to intentionally shorten the lifespan of a product with the aim of making customers replace it. In early 2018, French authorities used this law to investigate reports that Apple deliberately slowed down older iPhones via software updates
#43
TIL that Persian King Agha Mohammad Khan ordered the execution of two servants for being too loud. Since it was a holy day, he postponed their execution by a day and made the servants return to their duties. They murdered the king in his sleep that night
#44
TIL that in ancient Rome, commoners would evacuate entire cities in acts of revolt called “Secessions of the Plebeians”, leaving the elite in the cities to fend for themselves
#45
TIL the creators of “Parks and Recreation” did research for the show by interviewing actual government officials. One said, “Well, I’m a libertarian, so I don’t really believe in the mission of my job. Yes, I’m aware of the irony.” The character of Ron Swanson was born.
#46
TIL a New Jersey man bought a $5 bottle of orange juice from Shoprite; his wife said it was too expensive and sent him back to return it, because it was on sale for $2.50 elsewhere. He then decided to buy 2 lottery tickets with the cash refunded from the OJ; he won $315.3 million.
#47
TIL Dogs get sprayed by Skunks so often because Skunks lift their tails as a warning, Dogs see this as “Come smell my butt” which is the EXACT OPPOSITE MESSAGE from what the Skunk is trying to send.
#48
TIL that in “Forrest Gump,” when his microphone is cut off at the rally, what you don’t hear him say is “Sometimes when people go to Vietnam, they go home to their mommas without any legs. Sometimes they don’t go home at all. That’s a bad thing. That’s all I have to say about that.”
#49
TIL Max Planck was told by his professor to not go into Physics because “almost everything is already discovered”. Planck said he didn’t want to discover anything, just learn the fundamentals. He went on to originate quantum theory and win a Nobel Prize.
#50
TIL that after Beethoven went deaf, he found he could affix a metal rod to his piano and bite down on it while he played, enabling him to hear perfectly through vibrations in his jawbone. The process is called bone conduction.
#51
TIL Martin Short, Steve Martin and Tom Hanks have regular ‘colonoscopy parties’ where they prep together overnight and share one car on the ride to get their colonoscopies the next day
#52
TIL a suicide bomber with explosives in his laptop boarded the Somali owned Daallo Airlines in 2016 intending to blow the whole aircraft. Twenty minutes after the takeoff, the bomb exploded, creating a hole in the plane, and the suicide bomber was sucked out of the plane. He was the only fatality.
#53
TIL a woman was sentenced to life in prison for poisoning her child to death with antifreeze. She gave birth to a second child while in prison, who was given to foster care. But he became sick with the same symptoms, indicating a genetic metabolic disorder, not poisoning. She was later released.
#54
TIL Costco’s hot dog has remained $1.50 since it was first introduced in 1984. After the company president complained they were losing money on it, CEO Jim Sinegal put his foot down. “If you raise [the price of] the effing hot dog, I will kill you,” Sinegal said.
#55
TIL when the Nazis burned Sigmund Freud’s books he said, “What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now, they are content with burning my books.”
#56
TIL that Billy Joel never sells front row seats in order to see the real fans right in front of him. He gives them away to random people in the cheap seats so that front row isn’t always just wealthy people
#57
TIL Dennis Ritchie who invented the C programming language, co-created the Unix operating system, and is largely regarded as influencing a part of effectively every software system we use on a daily basis died 1 week after Steve Jobs. Due to this, his death was largely overshadowed and ignored
#58
TIL: This year, the official Yu Gi Oh tournament hosted by Konami instituted a hygiene clause to rulebook. This allows judges to penalize players with dirty clothing or terrible odor by giving them a loss. Super Smash Bros tournament have also started implementing similar rules.
#59
TIL that a 13-year-old opened a hot dog stand in front of his home in Minnesota, causing a complaint to the health department. Instead of shutting him down, the inspectors helped him bring his stand up to code and paid the $87 fee for his permit out of their own pockets
#60
TIL that Pink Floyd’s The Wall is implied to be an endless loop. The final song, Outside the Wall, ends with the words “Isn’t this where…”, and the album begins with the words “… we came in?” with a continuation of the melody of the last song, hinting at the cyclical nature of Water’s theme
#61
TIL a Georgia teacher who bought a $400 travel insurance policy was rewarded $10,000 because she read the fine print of the contract. After reading to page 7, she saw a “Pays to Read” bit that said the first to email and mention the fine print contest would win 10K.
#62
TIL that Eminem watched his daughter, Hailie, get crowned homecoming queen from an empty classroom in the school because he didn’t want to take the attention away from her.
#63
TIL United Airlines had assured a blind woman that they would help her off the plane but only after the other passengers had gotten off, before forgetting about her and locking the plane up with her in it after everybody else had left
#64
TIL a Harvard study found that hiring one highly productive ‘toxic worker’ does more damage to a company’s bottom line than employing several less productive, but more cooperative, workers.
#65
TIL that in 1998 Sony had the chance to buy the rights to almost every Marvel character for 25 million. They opted to only buy the rights to Spider-Man for just 7 million, stating, “Nobody gives a shit about the other Marvel characters.”
#66
TIL in Lord of War starring Nicholas Cage, they bought 3000 real guns for the filming because it was cheaper to buy real guns and resell later than buying props. They also rented 50 tanks which were only available for a short period because the source had to sell them to Libya later
#67
TIL that the firm Cantor Fitzgerald lost 658 employees on 9/11. The CEO, who was taking his child to school that day, later distributed $180 million to the families and offered jobs to all children of the victims. 57 of those children were employed by Cantor Fitzgerald as of 2016.
#68
TIL After Martin Luther King was killed in 1968, his funeral was held at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, and a small group of current students were chosen to be ushers for his funeral. One of those ushers was Samuel L. Jackson.
#69
TIL that Mario Puzo, the author of the Godfather books who’d also adapted them to film, had no idea what he was doing as he’d never written a screenplay before. After winning two Oscars, he decided to buy a book on screenwriting to learn how. In the first chapter, it said “Study Godfather I”.
#70
TIL Gary Gygax’s wife was convinced he was having an affair so she followed him to a dimly lit basement and burst into the room only to find him and his friends hunched over hand drawn maps. Gary would go on to invent the role playing game “Dungeons and Dragons”
#71
TIL there’s a restaurant in New York that doesn’t employ chefs; they employ grandmas. Every day, a different grandma from around the world designs her own menu.
#72
TIL a local folk remedy in Boho, Ireland was to place soil from the local church under a pillow while you slept to cure infections. In 2018 a microbiologist found the churchyard’s soil contains a previously unknown strain of streptomyces which can be used to create antibiotics
#73
TIL Jim Carrey was the first actor to have three films go straight to number one in the same year. The year was 1994, and the films were The Mask, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, and Dumb and Dumber.
#74
TIL Eminem’s song “Lose Yourself” was the first rap song to win an Oscar for Best Original Song, but Eminem did not even watch the awards because he did not think he stood a chance at winning. Instead, he fell asleep watching cartoons with his daughter.
#75
TIL that a depressed Manchester teen used several fake online personas to convince his best friend to murder him, and after surviving the attack, he became the first person in UK history to be charged with inciting their own murder
#76
TIL: Laurence Tureaud named himself professionally as Mr. T because he hated how his father, uncle, and brother who returned from Vietnam, were disrespectfully called “boy” by whites. He wanted the first word from everybody’s mouth to be “Mister” when speaking to him
#77
TIL 29-yr-old Marine veteran Taylor Winston stole a truck to drive victims of the Las Vegas shooting to the hospital. He and his girlfriend made 2 trips having to pick only the most critically injured 10 – 15 people each time after helping boost others over a fence away from the shooter.
#78
TIL that 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.
#79
TIL apes don’t ask questions. While apes can learn sign language and communicate using it, they have never attempted to learn new knowledge by asking humans or other apes. They don’t seem to realize that other entities can know things they don’t. It’s a concept that separates mankind from apes.
#80
TIL that there was a rumor that Stephen Hawking would deliberately run over the toes of people he didn’t like. He denied this rumor by stating it was “A Malicious rumor” and “I’ll run over anyone who repeats it”.
#81
TIL That while filming Tokyo Drift, they couldn’t get a permit to film a scene. They filmed it anyway, and the studio hired a fall guy to claim to be the director and spend a night in jail.
#82
TIL Carrie Fisher told her fans: “No matter how I go, I want it reported that I drowned in moonlight, strangled by my own bra.”
#83
TIL an 86-year-old wrote an upbeat review for her local paper about a new Olive Garden. She was mercilessly mocked by the Internet. Anthony Bourdain thought she had a valuable POV on small town dining. So he published a book of her reviews.
#84
TIL – In 1836, a sewer worker accidentally discovered an old drain which ran directly into the Bank of England’s gold vault. He wrote letters to the directors of the bank and requested a meeting inside the vault at an hour of their choosing – and popped out of the floor to greet them
#85
TIL in the 1880s, the Harvard Observatory director was frustrated with his staff, and would say “My Scottish maid could do better!” So, he hired his Scottish maid. Williamina Fleming ran a team for decades, classified tens of thousands of stars, & discovered white dwarfs and the Horsehead Nebula
#86
TIL “Military Grade” is just a marketing ploy. In the actual military, “military grade” means “meeting the bare-minimum requirements of durability, while also costing the least.”
#87
TIL That the Cuban Missile Crisis began when a CIA operative noticed soccer fields on a Cuban Military Base. “Cubans play baseball, Russians play soccer”
#88
TIL : IN 2006, a man in Portland, Oregon hired a hitman to kill his 51-year-old wife. His wife ended up killing the hitman with her bare hands. When Susan Kuhnhausen had her hands on his neck she asked him, “TELL ME WHO SENT YOU HERE AND I WILL CALL YOU A FUCKING AMBULANCE!”
#89
TIL Garden Veggie Straws, which shows fresh vegetables on the bag, and are promoted as a healthy alternative to chips, are actually made of salt, starch, and tomato paste. They have less nutrition than actual potato chips and the manufacturer, which has a history of false claims, is now being sued
#90
TIL the crew of ‘Return of the Jedi’ mocked the character design of Admiral Ackbar, deeming it too ugly. Director Richard Marquand refused to alter it, saying, “I think it’s good to tell kids that good people aren’t necessarily good looking people and that bad people aren’t necessarily ugly people.”
#91
TIL that an outlaw isn’t any mere criminal, but rather a criminal who has been sentenced to be “outside of the protection of the law”. He has no right to trial, and can be killed or persecuted by anybody.
#92
TIL after writing the main riff of Seven Nation Army, Jack White planned to save it in case he was ever asked to write a James Bond theme. Deciding this was unlikely to happen, he recorded the song anyways. Five years later, he was asked to write the theme song for the Bond film Quantum of Solace.
#93
TIL Washington Redskins’ owner Dan Snyder once cut down trees along the Potomac River so that he could see it from his house. The trees were located in a national park, and a ranger who raised concern about the issue was raided by US Marshals
#94
TIL only three people in the nation were qualified to hand-pack the parachutes for Apollo 15. Their expertise was so vital, they were not allowed to ride in the same car together for fear that a single auto accident could cripple the space program.
#95
TIL that the Mythbusters once tested a combination of common materials that made an extremely powerful explosive. They deleted the tapes and swore to never release the information, then contacted DARPA and warned them about the possibility of misuse from the combination.
#96
TIL the Japanese bullet train system is equipped with a network of sensitive seismometers. On March 11, 2011, one of the seismometers detected an 8.9 magnitude earthquake 12 seconds before it hit and sent a stop signal to 33 trains. As a result, only one bullet train derailed that day.
#97
TIL: Teddy Roosevelt was chosen as Vice President due to his support of anti-trust reform, and conservatives knew the VP had little power. Six months into the term, President McKinley was assassinated and Roosevelt became President, ushering in an unprecedented era of anti-trust and labor reforms.
#98
TIL that a Polish environmental charity put a SIM card in a GPS tracker to follow the migratory pattern of a white stork. They lost track of the stork and later received a phone bill for $2,700; someone in Sudan had taken the SIM from the tracker and made over 20 hours of calls.
#99
TIL when Lawrence Anthony, known as “The Elephant Whisperer”, passed away. A herd of elephants arrived at his house in South Africa to mourn him. Although the elephants were not alerted to the event, they travelled to his house and stood around for two days, and then dispersed.
#100
TIL Seth Putnam, lead singer of the grindcore band Anal Cunt, wrote a song making fun of comatose people called ‘You’re in a Coma’. Putnam himself was in a coma years later, and after waking remarked that “being in a coma was just as fuckin’ stupid as I wrote it was”.
#101
TIL: Nirvana played a concert in Beunos Aires where the crowd threw mud and trash at the all-girl opening act. Kurt Cobain was so upset that he sabotaged the show by playing mostly lesser known songs and teasing ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ without ever playing it.
#102
TIL of Bob Fletcher, a man who took care of the farms of three Japanese American families while they were interned during World War 2. By keeping their farms running and paying their taxes and mortgages, he ensured the families didn’t lose everything. He was even shot at for supporting them.
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