c/TodayILearned

c/TodayILearned PostBot • 1 year ago • 100%

TIL after a serious accident that left him with a permanent injury, Emperor Maximilian I became mordibly depressed in his later year. For the last four years of his life, he wouldn't travel anywher... en.wikipedia.org

c/TodayILearned PostBot • 1 year ago • 100%

TIL the featured speaker at Gettysburg was Edward Everett, not Lincoln. He gave a 2 hour speech preceding the Gettysburg Address. After, he wrote to Lincoln "I should be glad if I could flatter mys... en.wikipedia.org

c/TodayILearned PostBot • 1 year ago • 100%

TIL that Napoleon was an ethnically Italian and was above average in height for his time. en.wikipedia.org

c/TodayILearned PostBot • 1 year ago • 100%

TIL that in the UK, a thick beef paste called Bovril is spread on toast or reconstituted into “beef tea.” It’s name comes from the Latin bovinus, for ox; and vril, a substance from a late 1800s nov... en.wikipedia.org

c/TodayILearned PostBot • 1 year ago • 100%

TIL when the town of Exeter, Massachusetts renamed itself to honor Benjamin Franklin in 1778, they asked Franklin to donate a bell to the town church. Franklin responded with a donation of books in... https://www.franklinma.gov/about-us/pages/library-history

c/TodayILearned PostBot • 1 year ago • 100%

TIL about Roy Pearson, a judge who sued his dry cleaners for $54 million after he accused them of losing his pants abcnews.go.com

c/TodayILearned PostBot • 1 year ago • 100%

TIL Out of 7 recorded incidents of "talk-down landings" - when the pilot becomes incapacitated and the plane is landed by a passenger with assistance over the radio - All were successful, with no i... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk-down_aircraft_landing

c/TodayILearned PostBot • 1 year ago • 100%

TIL the green on the flag of Brazil represents the House of Braganza for Pedro I while the yellow represents the House of Habsburg for Empress Maria Leopoldina en.wikipedia.org

c/TodayILearned PostBot • 1 year ago • 100%

TIL that the chocolate bar known as "Milky Way" in the US is sold as "Mars" in the rest of the world and the chocolate bar known as "Milky way" outside the US is sold as "3 Musketeers" in the US en.wikipedia.org

c/TodayILearned PostBot • 1 year ago • 100%

TIL that over 60% of modern Japanese vocabulary is borrowed from Middle Chinese. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Japanese_vocabulary

c/TodayILearned PostBot • 1 year ago • 100%

TIL in the 1940s in Idaho they parachuted beavers into remote areas to help restore wetlands earthsky.org

c/TodayILearned PostBot • 1 year ago • 100%

TIL: Famine is not a natural disaster — nearly all historical famines, such as the Irish Potato Famine, are primarily man-made. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/01/19/577659864/author-todays-famines-arent-as-bad-as-you-think-they-are#:~:text=Famine%20is%20not%20a%20natural,place%20to%20produce%20enough%20food.

c/TodayILearned PostBot • 1 year ago • 100%

TIL in 1993 a fan at a Chicago Bulls game won a shot to make a basket from half court for $1million and made it. The insurance company disqualified him because he played bball in college but the te... www.espn.com

c/TodayILearned PostBot • 1 year ago • 100%

TIL one way schizophrenics identify hallucinations is to use their phone camera and check there. youtu.be

c/TodayILearned PostBot • 1 year ago • 89%

TIL, rapper Otherwize defeated Eminem at the 97’ Rap Olympics, his prize was $500 & a Rolex watch. The watch was stolen the same night and he blew his winnings at a bar https://eminem.news/otherwize-rap-olympics.html

c/TodayILearned PostBot • 1 year ago • 95%

TIL That Grace Hopper, one of the very first women to ever work on a computer, came-up with the idea of using regular, English words to program a computer, due to her post-WWII experience trying to... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLOW-MATIC

c/TodayILearned PostBot • 1 year ago • 95%

TIL about an Australian jellyfish that causes Irukandji syndrome: excruciating muscle cramps, severe pain in the back and kidneys, a burning sensation of the skin and face, headaches, nausea, restl... en.wikipedia.org

c/TodayILearned PostBot • 1 year ago • 97%

TIL Cuba’s biggest economic export is doctors, who they lease to foreign governments for $11 billion a year, with around 50,000 Cuban doctors serving 67 different countries at any one time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_medical_internationalism

c/TodayILearned PostBot • 1 year ago • 97%

TIL that Jacksonville, Florida is the largest city by area in the continental United States at 875 square miles and was named after General Andrew Jackson who never even visited Jacksonville ever refactoid.com

c/TodayILearned PostBot • 1 year ago • 90%

TIL that James Cox didn't know the value of his second-hand watch until someone admired his 'Paul Newman' style watch. It 𝘸𝘢𝘴 Newman's actual watch and Cox sold it for $15.5m + premium rubberb.com

c/TodayILearned PostBot • 1 year ago • 100%

TIL that less than two weeks after the French surrender in WWII, the British attacked a French naval base to prevent Germany from using the ships. Over 1,200 died and multiple ships were destroyed ... en.wikipedia.org

c/TodayILearned PostBot • 1 year ago • 100%

TIL The iconic theme from The Legend of Zelda for the NES was arranged in one night because Nintendo composer Koji Kondo initially planned to use Ravel's Boléro as the title theme for The Legend of... https://geekcentrals.com/the-copyright-incident-which-gave-rise-to-the-well-known-zelda-theme/

c/TodayILearned PostBot • 1 year ago • 100%

TIL that Shampoo was first discovered in India www.wikipedia.org

c/TodayILearned PostBot • 1 year ago • 100%

TIL that directors Wes Craven and Sam Raimi played a game of one-upmanship by depicting each other’s movies humorously in their own films. Beginning in The Evil Dead (1981), and continuing on throu... en.wikipedia.org

c/TodayILearned PostBot • 1 year ago • 95%

TIL that on Jupiter's moon Io, tidal effects from Jupiter cause the ground itself to move up and down by 300 feet. Typical tidal range on earth is 3 feet in the open ocean. https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/io-tides/en/

c/TodayILearned PostBot • 1 year ago • 100%

TIL Canadian Physicians Can Now Prescribe Nature To Patients https://www.npr.org/2022/02/09/1079356799/a-new-program-in-canada-gives-doctors-the-option-of-prescribing-national-park-vi

c/TodayILearned PostBot • 1 year ago • 98%

TIL potatoes yield 17.8 million calories per acre, so you could feed a family of four on less than 1/4 acre https://www.waldeneffect.org/blog/Calories_per_acre_for_various_foods/

c/TodayILearned PostBot • 1 year ago • 77%

TIL “☪️OE✡️IS✝️” was designed by a Piotr Mlodozeniec for a contest held by an art museum in Jerusalem. The design gained popularity when Indians students trademarked it and sold it on shirts. Their... www.vox.com

c/TodayILearned PostBot • 1 year ago • 100%

TIL Six years after surviving a shark attack and following repeated appeals to South Australian authorities, Chris Blowes finally won a special exemption that gave him the legal right to possession... www.bbc.com

c/TodayILearned PostBot • 1 year ago • 95%

TIL that Venus flytraps can count the number of times an insect touches their trigger hairs, helping them optimize their response for energy conservation and effective digestion. www.bbc.co.uk

c/TodayILearned PostBot • 1 year ago • 88%

TIL of the .22 Eargesplitten Loudenboomer, a rifle cartridge designed for its projectile to exceed 5000 feet per second. It is based on a .378 Weatherby cartrige necked down to .22 caliber. It neve... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.22_Eargesplitten_Loudenboomer

c/TodayILearned PostBot • 1 year ago • 90%

TIL that the Lennox Lewis vs Mike Tyson fight was supposed to have been held in Las Vegas. Nevada however refused to grant Tyson a licence, after he got involved in a brawl at the press conference. wikipedia.org

c/TodayILearned PostBot • 1 year ago • 97%

TIL The actor who played Random Task in Austin Powers was sentenced to 7 years for torture (SA) and a further 27 years for murdering his cell mate whilst incarcerated en.wikipedia.org

c/TodayILearned PostBot • 1 year ago • 100%

TIL about structural colouration. ‘Structural coloration in animals, and a few plants, is the production of colour by microscopically structured surfaces fine enough to interfere with visible light... en.wikipedia.org

c/TodayILearned PostBot • 1 year ago • 100%

TIL Georgia Tann, the “creator” of adoption, started by stealing babies from the poor and selling them to prominent socialites making millions in the process. historydaily.org

c/TodayILearned PostBot • 1 year ago • 95%

TIL about how scientists taught monkeys the concept of money. Not long after, the first prostitute monkey appeared. www.zmescience.com

c/TodayILearned PostBot • 1 year ago • 100%

TIL In some places in history counterfeitting coins was punishable with being boiled alive in oil https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_by_boiling#Historical_practice

c/TodayILearned PostBot • 1 year ago • 66%

TIL a Polish charity placed a tracker on the back of a white stork to track the birds migratory habits. It travelled to Sudan before the charity lost contact. Somebody found the tracker, removed th... www.bbc.com

c/TodayILearned PostBot • 1 year ago • 98%

TIL Mike Judge created Boomhauer's voice based on a disgruntled viewer's voice mail that he couldn't understand. The voice mail was left during the Beavis and Butthead days. Here is a link to that ... www.youtube.com

c/TodayILearned PostBot • 1 year ago • 98%

TIL turn signal neglect is twice as dangerous as distracted driving www.clickondetroit.com