The human brain has about one billion neurons. Each neuron forms about 1,000 connections to other neurons, making up more than a trillion connections. If each neuron could only help store a single memory, you might have only a few gigabytes of storage space. But neurons combine so that each one helps with many memories at a time, exponentially increasing the brain’s memory storage capacity to something close to 2.5 petabytes (or a million gigabytes).
To put that into perspective, imagine your brain like a digital TV recorder. 2.5 petabytes would be enough to hold three million hours of TV shows — you could leave the TV running continuously for more than 300 years.
That’s a lot of storage. So why waste it? Today I Learned, often shortened as TIL, is one of the biggest communities on Reddit. It has 25.9 million members, constantly sharing interesting trivia like the location of the clearest lake in the world or the reason why Nas listed his then 7-year-old daughter as an executive producer on his fifth album. To put some of your 2.5 petabytes to good use, we rounded up some of the best posts we could find on the subreddit.
However, since you will probably have a few megabytes to spare even after you finish scrolling through the list, fire up our older publications on Today I Learned here, here, and here.
#1
TIL Salvador Dali once conned Yoko Ono into paying $10,000 for a single blade of grass. Yoko had offered to pay that amount for one of his mustache hairs. He substituted the blade of grass because he thought that Yoko Ono was a witch and might use his hair in a spell.
Image credits: Captain_Moseby
#2
Nas listed his then 7-year-old daughter, Destiny Jones, as an executive producer on his fifth studio album Stillmatic to ensure she would always receive royalty checks from the album.
Image credits: trifletruffles
#3
TIL the clearest lake in the world is the Blue Lake located in Nelson, New Zealand. Visibility in the lake is up to 80 metres meaning the water is considered almost as optically clear as distilled water.
Image credits: Pazluz
#4
TIL Octopuses are one of the most intelligent creatures on the planet, capable of solving complex puzzles, using tools, escaping captivity, and planning ahead in the future.
Image credits: umartin404
#5
TIL that female dogs can get pregnant by multiple male dogs within the same heat cycle, then give birth to X amount of puppies per father.
Image credits: alhaddah
#6
TIL that the reticular activating system is the part of the brain that sorts through all the billions of pieces of information our senses take in and then allows through the important stuff. It is why after you a buy a red sedan, you now see red sedans everywhere when you didn’t notice them before.
Image credits: jafo410
#7
TIL astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell Burnell, who as a student discovered pulsars, credits her discovery to impostor syndrome and a fear of being kicked out of college; “I’m a bit of a fighter, so I decided until they threw me out I would work my very hardest”. That discovery earned the 1974 Nobel Prize.
Image credits: WhileFalseRepeat
#8
TIL Crowing first at dawn is a privilege reserved for the highest ranking rooster.
Image credits: bawledannephat
#9
TIL it is not recommended to flush a scorpion down a toilet, as scorpions can survive being under the water hence they may come back out that same toilet or crawl up the drains and into your home
Image credits: ahm713
#10
TIL In the 1930’s a selling point for TP started by Northern Tissue company was that their toilet paper was “splinter free”
Image credits: YoMomsHubby
#11
TIL that the Red Bull energy drink was originally invented by a duck farmer from Thailand as a hangover cure (called Krathing Daeng in Thai) before being bought over by Austrian businessman Dietrich Mateschitz who discovered it on a business trip in 1987.
Image credits: studyinthai333
#12
TIL that the “Monopoly Man”, the guy in jail and the policeman on the Monopoly Board all have names: Milburn Pennybags, Jake the Jailbird and Officer Mallory
Image credits: chubwhump
#13
TIL that March 12th, 1990, over 60 disability rights activists abandoned their mobility aids and climbed, crawled, and edged up the 83 stone steps of the U.S Capitol, demanding the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which had been stalled in Congress. It was called the ‘Capitol Crawl’.
Image credits: ewokiee
#14
TIL beavers build their dams as an instinct to stop the sounds of water leaks. If a speaker is playing just the sound of running water, a beaver will build a dam over it. This is even if it’s over concrete with no visible water, or if an actual nearby leaky water source is quieter than the speaker.
Image credits: imaginexus
#15
TIL that MIT created a system that provides cooling with no electricity. It was tested in a blazing hot Chilean desert and achieved a cooling of 13C compared to the hot surroundings
Image credits: Ocean_Beast
#16
TIL the medals in the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games are made from metals recovered from recycled cell phones collected since 2017.
Image credits: MelonMuenster
#17
TIL of Research during 1950s all-male combat aircraft assignments revealed that a woman’s voice was more likely to gain the attention of young men in distracting situations. Joan Elms voice was used for the automated voice warnings for Convair B-58 and was named “Sexy Sally” by the pilots.
Image credits: rainbowarriorhere
#18
TIL that there is a spider called the Darwin’s bark spider whos web is 10x stronger than kevlar. it is the toughest biological material ever studied..
Image credits: CraigC90
#19
TIL the idea for the McDonald’s Happy Meal originated in Guatemala. Created by manager Yolanda Fernández de Cofiño to simplify the menu for busy parents, it was later brought to the attention of the Chicago office who developed it further and deployed it in the U.S.
Image credits: spiffyP
#20
TIL in Greenland, it is illegal to bring any other breed of dog north of the Arctic Circle in order to maintain the purity of the Greenland Dog.
Image credits: janmayeno
#21
TIL Sony sold its waterproof Walkman in a bottle of water to prove it was really waterproof.
Image credits: Suyrz
#22
TIL Bruce Lee was the winner of the 1958 Hong Kong Cha-Cha Dancing Championship. He kept a card with 108 different cha-cha dance steps in his wallet and developed new moves which he wrote down in a personal notebook labeled “Cha-Cha Fancy Steps.”
Image credits: trifletruffles
#23
TIL: the US Gov’t made a deal with the Italian Mafia to ensure that no German or Italian saboteurs snuck in through the New York port/docks by providing information to the US Navy. They also guaranteed no dockworkers would strike, therefore ensuring a constant line of supplies leaving to the front.
Image credits: Mookie_Merkk
#24
TIL the X’s often seen on moonshine bottles in old cartoons, etc. represent the amount of runnings, or how many times it was distilled.
Image credits: RickShaw530
#25
TIL Bangladesh, the 8th largest country in the world (population of 170 million), is the most populated country to have never won an Olympic medal.
Image credits: MaziicM
#26
TIL dying coral reefs lack the sound attract new fish. Speakers playing healthy reef noises at dying coral reefs increases species diversity and doubles fish abundance.
Image credits: fighterace00
#27
TIL – Raccoons and skunks will literally sniff out a yellow jacket nest at night and dig it up to eat the yellow jackets.
Image credits: onecrazy88fan
#28
TIL that hippo sweat contains a chemical that has an SPF factor to prevent them from getting sunburned.
Image credits: whippet66
#29
TIL: In 400BC, the Persians invented a way to make ice in the desert using evaporation cooling
Image credits: dismygyans
#30
TIL comedy legend Mel Brooks was an uncredited producer of The Elephant Man, released in 1980. He was left off the credits for fear that fans would believe the movie was a comedy.
Image credits: justinroark88
#31
TIL of Charlie Walker, the first non-government individual to fly into space. After NASA deemed him unqualified and rejected his 1978 application for astronaut, he co-developed a space bound device which required him to accompany it. Walker flew into space three times with the device he co-patented.
Image credits: WhileFalseRepeat
#32
TIL tarantula hawk wasp larva creates a small hole in a paralyzed spider’s abdomen, then enters and feeds voraciously, avoiding vital organs for as long as possible to keep the spider alive. It emerges several weeks later as a wasp.
Image credits: poison_ivey
#33
TIL In 1908, the Russian shooting team arrived at the London Olympics twelve days late. The Russian team had made sure to arrive a few days before the event was scheduled, but Russia still used the Julian calendar. The UK had switched to the Gregorian calendar 150 years earlier
Image credits: JoyPaul66
#34
TIL of a study to determine contamination levels for computer keyboards in the average office setting. One keyboard had to be removed after testing because it was found to be five times dirtier than a toilet seat, home to 150 times the acceptable limit of bacteria, and was a health risk to its user.
Image credits: WhileFalseRepeat
#35
TIL in 1999, Tom Green hung his own unauthorized piece of art in the National Gallery of Canada (which remained untouched for days) with the added twist of later coming back and vandalizing it to the horror of onlooking patrons.
Image credits: SheilaWholehearted
#36
TIL that when his father died of a heart attack, Ronald Mallett resolved to discover time travel to see him again. He went on to earn a PhD in physics and become a professor, and has been working on plans for a time machine ever since.
Image credits: ShabtaiBenOron
#37
TIL the US provided Laos with funds and concrete to expand an airport which could serve as a base for US fighter jets during the Vietnam War. But as the funds and concrete arrived before any contract was signed, Laos decided instead to build a memorial to soldiers who died in World War II.
Image credits: trifletruffles
#38
Til Russian fishermen learned to farm caviar as early as the 12th century and for centuries it was considered nothing more than cheap peasant food, served with porridge and eaten by the bowlful
Image credits: Soocas
#39
TIL of Eric Moussambani, who had never seen an olympic sized swimming pool before the 2000 olympics. He recorded the slowest time in 100m freestyle history at 1:52.72, however won his heat as all other competitors false started. He is now a national hero the head swimming coach of Equatorial Guinea
Image credits: jbomber1
#40
TIL There was an elevator driver strike in NYC in 1945. Up until then people were afraid to use automatic elevators but the strike drove their mass adoption. The elevator driver job driver demand started to decline which ultimately meant their job is lost forever.
Image credits: nixass
#41
TIL Drowning people almost never shout, thrash or wave for help. 10% of children who drown are supervised by adults who don’t recognise the signs.
Image credits: Boborovski
#42
TIL Olympic swimming is only timed to hundredths of a second because the pools aren’t built to the millimeter tolerances necessary to measure thousandths of a second
Image credits: UltraMechaPunk
#43
TIL of Vasili Mitrokhin, a KGB archivist who kept a vast collection of handwritten notes on top secret files. When he defected to British Intelligence in 1992, he brought six trunks of notes with him that exposed most KGB activities in the West during the Cold War
Image credits: Rob-With-One-B
#44
TIL the FICO credit score was started in 1989 and people used to be able to get approved for a mortgage with a letter of recommendation from their priest
Image credits: WW_III_ANGRY
#45
TIL Anthony Rossi who founded Tropicana Products in 1945 was an Italian immigrant who arrived in the US with $25 and did not know English. He developed an orange juice pasteurization process to allow transport from the factory in Florida to as far away as New York starting in 1970.
Image credits: FuzzBug55
#46
TIL Leonardo da Vinci wrote “all the branches of a tree at every stage of its height when put together are equal in thickness to the trunk”. In 2011 Christophe Eloy investigated and found that trees which followed Leonardo’s rule would be the best at resisting wind-induced fracture.
Image credits: jamescookenotthatone
#47
TIL A missing DJ’s body was found nearly mummified within the walls of a bar soon after Winnipeg instituted a no smoking in bars law. Before the ban, the smell of cigarette smoke covered up the smell of his decomposing body.
Image credits: Polohorsesnpiff
#48
TIL that “freestyle” is a swimming event, not a swimming stroke. The name of the most commonly used stroke in freestyle races is the “front crawl” but swimmers are free to use any stroke they prefer.
Image credits: calciumfiend
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