Life’s a lot better when you stay curious and open-minded about the world. That’s easier said than done, however. Adult responsibilities, work, studies, chores, and stress all get in the way. But if you have a few minutes to spare, some corners of the internet reward you with newfound knowledge.
To share some of that knowledge with you, we’re showcasing some of the most intriguing and unusual facts shared by members of the ‘Today I Learned’ (TIL) online community this June. Scroll down to expand your mind. Hopefully, these facts will pique your curiosity and inspire you to spend more time reading about topics you never knew you were interested in.
#1
TIL that in 1999, 11-year old Mitchell Schop wrote to his favorite band, Cake, and asked if they would play his Bar Mitzvah. After Schop sang his favorite song of theirs to the band over the phone, Cake agreed and made Schop’s party the first stop on their 1999 world tour
Image credits: MrMojoFomo
#2
TIL that Ken Allen, an orangutan at the San Diego Zoo, became famous for his many successful escapes. During his escapes, he would peacefully stroll around the zoo looking at other animals. He never acted aggressively toward patrons, but would throw rocks at Otis, another orangutan he “despised”
Image credits: bnrshrnkr
#3
TIL that although intensely private, Joe DiMaggio allowed a children’s hospital to use his name and image on condition that they never turn away a child because of inability to pay. The deal was struck with a promise and a handshake.
Image credits: Overall-Register9758
According to Leon F. Seltzer, PhD, curiosity seems to improve your cognitive functioning. In other words, it helps your mind work more logically and efficiently.
Seltzer explains that being curious can make us more intelligent, “enhancing our critical thinking skills and making us more likely to question assumptions, challenge beliefs, assess evidence, and so make better, more informed decisions.” On top of that, curiosity can also boost your imagination and creativity.
Furthermore, curiosity can also increase your:
- Confidence
- Self-esteem
- Sense of pride
- Purpose
- Life direction
#4
TIL that after featuring as the “childlike empress” in The Neverending Story, the 11 year old actress began receiving marriage proposals from adult men resulting in her hiatus from acting until she was an adult.
Image credits: loadnurmom
#5
TIL that when his son Xinzhen was abducted by a child trafficker in 1997, Guo Gangtang spent 24 years, his life savings and 10 motorbikes on a search for him across China. They were finally reunited in 2021 and his efforts helped the Chinese authorities find over 100 more abducted children.
Image credits: ShabtaiBenOron
#6
TIL People with social anxiety disorder have a different gut microbiome – transplanting their microbiome to mice causes the mice to suffer from increased social fear
Image credits: FissileAlarm
In a recent article, UCLA points out that curiosity tends to wane as you get older. That being said, one type of curiosity—state curiosity—can increase into old age.
“State curiosity is what psychologists call the kind of momentary feeling of curiosity people experience when they are asked about specific topics. Trait curiosity [your general level of curiosity], on the other hand, is a personality trait. Some people, for example, might not be very inquisitive by nature, being content to accept things more or less at face value (trait curiosity), but have a passionate thirst for knowledge in specific topics or hobbies (state curiosity). All people possess varying degrees of both trait and state curiosity.”
Individuals who maintain their curiosity as they age can offset or even prevent Alzheimer’s disease. The reverse is also true. People who aren’t curious or interested in the world can be at greater risk of dementia.
#7
TIL that there is a strategy for winning competitive debates called “spreading”, which involves making as many arguments as possible within a short time so that the opponent is unable to respond to them all. The technique has been described as unfair and as “sounding like a cattle auctioneer”.
Image credits: Vegetable-Orange-965
#8
TIL that a sunfish in a Japanese aquarium became so lonely after the aquarium closed to visitors for renovations that it stopped eating. Only after staff placed photos of people’s faces near its tank did the sunfish perk up and start eating again
Image credits: Prior-Student4664
#9
TIL after a woman put $40 into a lottery vending machine with the intention of buying multiple cheaper tickets, “some rude person” bumped into her & caused her to accidentally select a $30 ticket. She was annoyed until she started scratching that ticket & realized she’d won the $10 million jackpot.
Image credits: tyrion2024
The ‘Today I Learned’ group, boasting 41 million members, is one of the largest communities on Reddit. Originally, it was created in late 2008. The premise is simple: you share interesting facts about something that you only recently found out.
These aren’t random opinions or biased posts either. If you want to share something you learned on the TIL sub, you must back up the facts you post with reliable, objective sources. The high bar set by the moderators is one of the reasons why the subreddit continues to be so incredibly successful.
#10
TIL in 2014 Ben Affleck was banned for life from playing blackjack at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas after he was caught on camera counting cards at a high rollers table. He was told by security that he was “too good” and had been deemed an advantage blackjack player.
Image credits: tyrion2024
#11
TIL that George Washington died with a net worth of $594.2 million in today’s money, and drew a presidential salary of $25,000 (~$900k today) which was around 2% of the government’s budget at the time.
Image credits: Nitraus
#12
TIL a human brain uses 12 watts to think while, if it could, an AI system doing the same processing could use 2.7 billion watts
Image credits: 49orth
A penny for your thoughts, Pandas. Which of the TIL facts that we’ve featured here today genuinely surprised you? Which ones got you thinking about the topic so much that you actually want to do more research?
On the other hand, which of these facts did you actually know before? What do you do to stay curious about the world, no matter what life throws at you? We’re always happy to hear from you! Share your thoughts in the comments below.
#13
TIL that Bruce Lee was only 32 years old when he died from a brain edema after not being able to be woken up from a nap.
Image credits: scream3isawful
#14
TIL that the demand for Ozempic is so great that it has boosted Denmark’s entire economy
Image credits: SocraticTiger
#15
TIL Margot Kidder (Lois Lane from the original Superman) had a manic breakdown after the laptop she was using to write her autobiography crashed. She disappeared for four days
Image credits: aprettyp
#16
TIL that Jeremy Clarkson’s mother, Shirley Clarkson, designed and created the very first Paddington Bear toy in the early 1970s, prototypes that she made for Jeremy and his sister later became a licensed product that funded his education and helped launch his TV career
Image credits: dtdowntime
#17
TIL in the 1980s, a woman bought a ring at a car boot sale for £10 & proceeded to wear it regularly under the assumption it was a piece of costume jewelry. However when she had it appraised decades later, it was identified as a real 26-carat diamond ring from the 1800s, which she then sold for £656K
Image credits: tyrion2024
#18
TIL at Animal Kingdom in Disney World balloons aren’t allowed so they created a “balloon daycare” where your balloon is stored and they’ll give you a report card about its day and its activities.
Image credits: MothersMiIk
#19
TIL that in 1906, a serial k**ler in Morocco was sentenced to death by immurement (being walled in).
Image credits: a7xfan01
#20
TIL sun exposure may cause skin cancer, but it also lowers overall mortality rates, including from cancer
Image credits: katxwoods
#21
TIL Studies show patients suffering from kidney stones often passed the stones while riding the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad
#22
TIL that in 2020, an Oregon man driving a stolen car crashed into a woman driving another stolen car
#23
TIL a study on professional slap fighting analyzed 333 slaps for visible signs of concussion & found that more than 50% of the slap sequences resulted in fighters showing visible signs of concussion, with nearly 80% of the fighters demonstrating at least 1 sign of concussion during their matches.
Image credits: tyrion2024
#24
TIL the old Danish criteria for common law marriage was that” If anyone has a mistress in his home for three winters and obviously sleeps with her, and she commands lock and key and obviously eats and drinks with him, then she shall be his wife and rightful lady of the house.”
Image credits: watchful_tiger
#25
TIL that in 2003 Hideo Kojima designed a Game Boy Advance game with a light sensor built into the cartridge. The player’s in-game weapon is charged by taking the game outside and playing it in natural sunlight, and game mechanics change when it’s dark out in your area
Image credits: Smaptimania
#26
TIL at the luxurious French brothel One-Two-Two there were themed rooms. One of the rooms, the Orient Express was a replica of a train car. It had sound effects and shook and bounced like a real train in motion. You could even have an intrusive conductor barge into the room and join in.
Image credits: TheMadhopper
#27
TIL The US Air Force dropped several BLU-82 “Daisy Cutter” bombs leftover from Vietnam during the Gulf War. A British SAS unit that witnessed the explosion reported “Sir, the blokes have just nuked Kuwait”
Image credits: ElevatorVivid3638
#28
TIL of the 85 known d***s that interact with grapefruit, 43 can have serious side-effects including sudden death, acute kidney failure, respiratory failure, gastrointestinal bleeding, and bone marrow suppression in people with weakened immune systems.
Image credits: tyrion2024
#29
TIL over 99% of Warren Buffett’s net worth was accumulated after he was 65 years old
Image credits: Fenceypents
#30
TIL that French used to have and provide mobile military brothels to their soldiers between WW1 and as late as 2003.
Image credits: my4coins
#31
TIL Clarence King, discoverer of Mount Whitney and one of the USA’s best-known scientists, revealed on his deathbed in 1901 that he had a second life, wife & five kids, living as a Black man named James Todd.
Image credits: vistopher
#32
TIL that Hetty Green, also called the “witch of Wall Street,” was incredibly rich, yet she continued to live in inexpensive lodgings, avoiding any display of wealth and seeking medical treatment for herself at charity clinics. On her death in 1916, Green left an estate of more than $100,000,000.
Image credits: Dystopics_IT
#33
TIL that, in the first printed attestation of orangutans in western sources, Malays claimed the ape could talk but preferred not to “lest he be compelled to labour”
#34
TIL that “blowing from a gun” was a brutal execution method where victims were tied to a cannon’s muzzle and fired upon. Beyond death, it denied burial rites, making it both a physical and spiritual punishment.
#35
TIL the process of making meat Kosher involves specifically the removal of the sciatic nerve due to the belief that Jacob had his sciatic nerve injured by an angel.
#36
TIL of the 4 students who passed their final exams in Einstein’s department, he got the lowest mark & was the only one who wasn’t offered a job as an assistant teacher at their alma mater. After graduation, he struggled to find teaching work for 2 years. So a friend got him a job as a patent clerk.
#37
TIL Humans are not the only species that has discovered agriculture. Ants have been practicing agriculture for at least 50 million years. The domestication of plant, fungus, and animal species by ants is well documented.
#38
TIL the first female US senator was also the last slave-owning US senator
#39
TIL that Judaism has a roughly 2500-year-old prayer for using the bathroom in which you thank God for giving you the right number of orifices and not sealing them or making new ones
#40
TIL that ancient Greek and Roman historians wrote about a species of headless humans with faces in their chest who supposedly populated Libya and Aethopia
#41
TIL Sony Pictures failed to adapt Michael Lewis’ best-selling book Flash Boys into a movie because of their apprehension with having an Asian lead actor, as revealed in private emails leaked in the 2014 Sony Pictures hack.
#42
TIL Ireland’s population peaked in the census of 1841 with over 8 million people. It never recovered from the long lasting effects of the potato famine. Was at 4 million for half a century. Today, it’s at 7.2 million, having not fully recovered almost 2 centuries post famine
#43
TIL of The British pet massacre, where an estimated 750,000 cats and dogs, a quarter of England’s pet population, were euthanized due to a government pamphlet suggesting the public do so, at the beginning of WW2.
#44
TIL that a working nuclear bomb can be designed by three PhD level Physicists in about two years — and that experiment was done in the 60s with them having no specialised knowledge in nuclear physics
#45
TIL that British WW2 rationing did not end until 1958.
#46
TIL that Japan’s rapid industrialization was driven by massive family-owned conglomerates called “zaibatsu,” which were so powerful they were essentially dismantled by the Allies after WWII to democratize the nation.
#47
TIL that aftershocks from the 1868 Hawaiʻi earthquake have continued until the present day — after more than 150 years!
#48
TIL the first words ever spoken in a feature film were, “Wait a minute, wait a minute. You ain’t heard nothin’ yet!” — delivered by Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer (1927).
#49
TIL that on Emma Watson’s 18th birthday, paparazzi attempted to take pictures under her skirt by laying down on the pavement in front of her house and then published them. If they were taken 24 hours earlier, it would have been illegal.
#50
TIL that Australian convicted criminal, gang member and author Mark Brandon “Chopper” Read refused a liver transplant, saying, “I’m 55-years-old; I’m not going to put my name down against some 10-year-old kid.”
#51
TIL 2055 brown recluse spiders were removed from a house in Kansas. The spiders had four human roommates who had lived in their house for many years and were never bitten, despite frequent encounters with the spiders.
#52
TIL Galapagos tortoises have been known to k**l the finches that groom them for parasites. The tortoise will suddenly retract its limbs to lay flat, and purposely fall on the bird, k**ling it and consuming it for protein.
#53
TIL that all diseases known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathy, such as Creutzfeldt–Jakob and fatal insomnia, have a perfect 100% mortality rate. There are no cases of survival and these diseases are invariably fatal.
#54
TIL of the 1997Jarrell, Texas “Dead Man Walking” tornado, a slow-moving F5 twister that sat over a subdivision for three full minutes, subjecting it to 260+ mph winds. It erased everything, killed 27 people, plus hundreds of cattle, and blended their remains together unrecognizably.
#55
TIL 15-year-old Shyam Lal in India decided to take his spade and dig a pond to quench the thirst of people and cattles. Fellow villagers laughed at him. Lal identified a spot in the forest in and kept digging — for 27 years. The result was a one-acre 15-feet deep pond.
#56
TIL that Blue Öyster Cult were forced to ban cowbells from their concerts after the SNL sketch, and never featured the instrument live until after it aired
#57
TIL in 2016 a man inadvertently recreated a “Seinfeld” plot: Attempting to return 10,000 aluminum cans in Michigan (10c return rate per) from Kentucky (5c return rate). He was later arrested for one count of beverage return of nonrefundable bottles.
#58
TIL Jared Leto sent used condoms and a dead pig to his Suicide Squad co-stars while preparing for his Joker role. As part of his method acting, he mailed disturbing items—like a live rat, bullets, and adult objects. Many co-stars found it unsettling and called the experience disturbing.
#59
TIL James Rothschild is a double heir, to both Rothschild and Guinness fortunes
#60
TIL house cats are considered to be “semi-domesticated”
#61
TIL Charles Lightoller was sucked back into Titantic, “he was pinned against the grating for some time by the pressure of the incoming water, until a blast of hot air from the depths of the ship erupted out of the ventilator and blew him to the surface.” He later fought in WW1 and WW2.
#62
TIL Alleged spy Mata Hari was a famous exotic dancer who never appeared fully nude onstage. Although she would strip off most of her clothes, her jeweled breastplate would remain. This was because she was self-conscious about her small breasts.
#63
TIL that Helen Keller was put on the FBI watchlist
#64
TIL that the 23 year reign of Emperor Antoninus Pius is considered the most peaceful in the history of the Roman Empire. There’s no record of Antoninus leading any military action, and it’s likely he likely never saw or commanded a Roman army or came within 500 miles of a legion during his reign.
#65
TIL about Masanobu Tsuji, an Imperial Japanese WWII Army officer who helped plan enough campaigns that he was nicknamed the “God of Strategy”. A known cannibal, he evaded war crime trials, briefly became a politician, worked with the CIA, before finally mysteriously vanishing in Laos in 1961.
#66
TIL there’s a philosophy that believes humans shouldn’t procreate and should eventually go extinct and it’s called antinatalism
#67
TIL Europe’s 2003 heat wave killed 70,000+ people. In France, 15,000 died as morgues overflowed — forcing authorities to store bodies in refrigerated trucks
#68
TIL There’s a statue in front of the HQ of the CIA with four encrypted messages and its fourth message remains undeciphered. It’s, in fact, one of the biggest mysteries in the world of cryptography.
#69
TIL Employees working for movie theaters in the US are exempted from federal law requiring overtime pay. The clause within the ‘Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938’ establishing “exemption for any employee employed by an establishment which is a motion picture theater” still remains in place today.
#70
TIL that all the royalties for The Animals’s version of The House of The Rising Sun went only to one person in the band because there was insufficient room to name all five band members on the record label.
#71
TIL chewing gum influences appetite and leads to a decrease in the feeling of hunger, desire to eat, and desire to eat a sweet snack
#72
TIL The original Jungle Gym was originally designed to help children comprehend the 4th dimension as a tesseract by an eccentric British mathematician.
#73
TIL the deer around Nara, the ancient early capital of Japan, are sacred in Shintoism for being messengers of the gods. They have been tame for centuries from humans not hunting them. They are popular with guests who buy “deer cookies” to feed them.
#74
TIL frogs will in fact try to escape a slowly boiling pot. The myth is based on 19th century experiments in which the frogs have had their brains removed before boiling.
#75
TIL that cracking your knuckles doesn’t cause arthritis. The sound comes from harmless gas bubbles popping.
#76
TIL Pausanias, the Spartan general who defeated the Persians at Plataea, was later accused of colluding with the Persians. He sought sanctuary at a temple, where his mother visited him only to lay a brick at the entrance, implying that they should seal it and starve him to death, which they did
#77
TIL Alaska and Hawaii are tied for having the lowest record high temp among the 50 US states. They each have a record high of just 100 degrees Fahrenheit
#78
TIL that to join the Civilian Conservation Corps, candidates were required to have at least six teeth.
#79
TIL blood lost during a cycle isn’t blood that’s been “stored” over the month long cycle, it’s blood coming from blood vessels in the uterus. As the uterine lining pulls away, ‘tiny’ ruptures/tears are caused in the blood vessels, and heavy cycles are caused by enlarged vessels & hormone imbalance
#80
TIL that atomic clocks are so precise that the most accurate ones won’t lose a second for over 30 billion years — longer than the age of the universe.
#81
TIL After British Airways Flight 9 flew through volcanic ash, the Captain announced “We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them going again. I trust you are not in too much distress.”
#82
TIL of Lyodura, a brain surgery material that, unknown to the buyers, was tissue harvested by the seller from black market human corpses and carried fatal incurable prion disease. Over 150 people were infected before its ban in 1996
#83
TIL about the 2017 United Express passenger removal incident, where four paying customers were selected to be involuntarily deplaned. One passenger was injured when he was physically assaulted. It led to USDOT rules that protect passengers from removal or denial of boarding after check-in.
#84
TIL producer Christopher Nolan initially opposed & tried to change director Zack Snyder & writer David Goyer’s idea to have Superman k**l Zod at the end of Man of Steel. He told them “There’s no way you can do this”. However, Goyer convinced him with a scene where Superman k**ling Zod saves a family
#85
TIL that when an escalator was first installed in a London department store “customers unnerved by the experience were revived by shopmen dispensing free smelling salts and cognac”
#86
TIL Australian serial K**ler Ivan Milat lost 25kg (55lbs) from a failed hunger strike in prison when he was denied a PlayStation
#87
TIL that when the Britannic, which was the sister ship of the Titanic, struck a German mine and began to sink, two lifeboats full of passengers left the ship without permission and were pulled into the vessel’s rotating propellers.
#88
TIL that the reason mental health professionals have a legal duty to breach confidentiality and warn potential victims or law enforcement if a patient poses a credible threat- is due to the Tarasoff case.
#89
TIL an endocrinologist irradiated the testicles of Oregon and Washington prisoners. He gave them $5/mo, and $100 when they had to receive a vasectomy upon conclusion of the trial. The surgeon said it was necessary to “keep from contaminating the general population with radiation-induced mutants”
#90
TIL on November 11, 1918, the US Navy’s 14-inch railway guns were last fired at 10:57:30 to ensure that the shells would impact just before the 11am armistice
#91
TIL about John Doe No. 24, an black teen who was found wandering the streets in 1945. As he was deaf, and seemingly incapable of otherwise communicating, police were unable to identify him, and sent him various mental institutions until his death in 1993.
#92
TIL that from the 1940s through the 1970s, all Ivy League colleges and Seven Sisters colleges (as well as Swarthmore) required all incoming freshmen to pose nude ostensibly to gauge the rate and severity of rickets, scoliosis, and lordosis in the population.
#93
Today I learned that the Library of Congress added, “Spy Kids” (2001) into their national film registry as a, “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” movie.
#94
TIL researchers discovered a 430,000-yr-old skull in a Spanish cave that bears evidence of deliberate, lethal blunt force trauma which represents the earliest case of murder in the hominin fossil record. The site where it was found is only accessible through a vertical chimney that extends 40ft down
#95
TIL when actor Patrick Stewart starred with a young rookie called Tom Hardy in Star Trek : Nemesis (2002), he never expected to hear about Tom Hardy again. He now admits he was glad to be proved wrong.
#96
TIL Boys in the United States used to wear dresses until they had their first haircut, which was usually around age 6-7.
#97
TIL that standing underneath a tree during a storm is the second leading cause of lightning strike deaths
#98
TIL of Torpedo Juice which was drunk by sailors in WW2 by combining 180-proof ethyl alcohol with pineapple juice.
#99
TIL of Hanns Scharff, a WWII German interrogator who never used torture, later moved to the US and designed the mosaic inside Cinderella’s Castle at Disney World.
#100
TIL that the Saudi dinasty, which unified Arabia and named the country after them, had to fight two other major dinasties over the control of Arabia, the Rashidis and the Hashemites, the Rashidis do not exist anymore but the Hashemites are kings of modern day Jordan
#101
TIL the highest blood alcohol level reported in a child or adolescent who survived occurred in 1995 when a 15-year-old boy survived a BAC of 0.757%.
#102
TIL Marottichal a village in India was rife with alcoholism and illicit gambling, but everything changed after one man taught the town to play chess. Miraculously, the game’s popularity flourished while drinking and gambling declined.
#103
TIL that the population density of Manhattan is 40% lower now than it was back in 1910, when it reached its peak population of 2.2M, compared to its now-present population of 1.6M.
#104
TIL Warren Buffett’s investment prowess led to Berkshire Hathaway generating a 19.8% annualized return from 1965-2023, nearly doubling the 10.2% return the S&P 500 had over that time. In 2024, Berkshire Hathaway became the first nontechnology company to top a $1 trillion market capitalization.
#105
TIL about Beatriz Flamini who spent 500 days alone in a cave without clocks, sunlight, or human contact as part of a scientific experiment on extreme isolation.
#106
TIL about Dorothy Molter who lived alone in the Northern Minnesota wilderness from 1948 until her death in 1986. Despite once being called “The Loneliest Woman in America” her remote cabin received upwards of 7,000 visitors a year with many stopping by to sample her homemade root beer.
#107
TIL: GPS satellites don’t ever actually interact with GPS devices at all. 31 US satellites simply broadcast their position non-stop and GPS devices triangulate their own position using the location of 3 “nearby” satellites.
#108
TIL: the Vestal Virgins held unique and extraordinary rights and privileges in Roman society, including some that no other had, male or female. They were sovereign and sacrosanct, answerable only to the emperor.
#109
TIL that the first women in America to earn a PhD in computer science was a Catholic nun, Sister Mary Keller
#110
TIL about Mats Järlström, a man who was fined for engineering in Oregon when he challenged the traffic light timing. He eventually won against Oregon’s ‘Title Laws’ and was proven right about the traffic light timing being too short for safety.
#111
TIL Frustrated with his generals inability to capture the town of Mirandola, Pope Julius II personally went there in January 1511, scolded his generals and personally assumed command of the siege. Two weeks later he took part in storming the walls, making sure to restrain his soldiers from looting
#112
TIL Comet Hale-Bopp was independently discovered in 1995 by two people: astronomer Alan Hale and amateur stargazer Thomas Bopp. Both immediately alerted the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams to report their discovery. Hale sent an e-mail, while Bopp sent a Western Union telegram.
#113
TIL Longinus, the man who is traditionally identified with stabbing Jesus in his side, is a saint. The lance he used to pierce Jesus with is usually called the Holy Lance. The act is also said to have made the last of the Five Holy Wounds of Christ.
#114
TIL in Sept 2023 MGM Resorts International & Caesars Entertainment were both hit by ransomware attacks from the same group. Caesars paid a $15m ransom instead of the $30m the attackers had demanded, however MGM refused to pay & had its operations shut down for several days which led to a $100m loss.
#115
TIL Paper is the best option on the first throw in a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors when playing against inexperienced players because they tend to lead with Rock. And Scissors is the best option on the first throw against experienced players because they won’t lead with Rock as it’d be “too obvious”
#116
TIL that the “He Who Has No Life” character that terrorizes the South Park children in the episode “Make Love, Not Warcraft” was based on video game project manager Joey Ray Hall
#117
TIL that Roman ladies would pay to have the sweat and muck of Gladiator’s bodies scraped off, so that they could use it as a moisturiser.
#118
TIL that Brazil was the only independent South American country to send combat troops overseas during the Second World War where they inflicted disproportionately high losses on enemy munitions, supplies, and infrastructure.
#119
TIL in 2024 the Canadian town of Drumheller attempted to set the world record for the largest gathering of people in inflatable dinosaur costumes. Their attempted was disqualified because more people than expected showed up and they lost count at 3000.
#120
TIL the 2021 Astroworld Festival crowd crush event was not a random tragedy, but a result of several logistical decisions made by LiveNation including overselling the festival, security breaches at admissions, and poor crowd flow management
#121
TIL a study lured 290 participants under the false premise the study was on attractiveness. They were told their peers would be rating their photo & while “waiting” for the ratings, they played Tetris for 10 minutes. Researchers found that Tetris can put people into a state of “flow” & ease anxiety.
#122
TIL the Guinness World Record for most birthdays in one day belongs to a Pakistani family, with every member having been born on August 1st; including the mother and father.
#123
TIL despite receiving criticism from some religious groups, the 1973 film “Jesus Christ Superstar” was beloved by Pope Paul VI. He told director Norman Jewison: “Not only do I appreciate your beautiful rock opera film, I believe it will bring more people to Christianity than anything ever has.”
#124
TIL. Astronauts left mirrors on the moon for scientists on earth to bounce lasers off.
#125
TIL that Woodrow Wilson is the only former Confederate citizen to be elected President. Born in Virginia in 1856, and serving from 1913-1921, he is the last President to be born into a slave-owning household.
#126
TIL in 1977, Stu Ungar was bet $100,000 by Bob Stupak (a casino owner) that he could not count down half of a six-deck shoe and then successfully determine what the last 156 cards are. Ungar won the bet.
#127
TIL Spanish entomologist Luis Méndez de Torres was the first to realize, in the late 1500s, the “king” bee was, in fact, a female. But he didn’t call it “queen,” but “mistress of the swarm.”
#128
TIL that Tom Selleck was almost cast as Indiana Jones instead of Harrison Ford. He only lost out because CBS wouldn’t let him out of his contract for Magnum PI.
#129
TIL that there is no evidence that Marie-Antoinette ever said the phrase “let them eat cake.” during the French Revolution
#130
TIL about Hysterical Strength – situations, most often of extreme danger, when people who were not known for their strength display physical strength beyond their apparent ability
#131
TIL there is an 85 mile stretch of land on the Mississippi River called “Cancer Alley” due to the concentration of petrochemical and refinery plants there.
#132
TIL in 1976, Jaime Sin was appointed a Cardinal in the Catholic Church, being formally known as “Cardinal Sin”. He would greet guests to his home with “Welcome to the house of Sin”.
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