40 Interesting Facts People Learned
There is always room for more knowledge. Cram your skull with all the flavors and facts that you could ever want. If you're looking for something just funny, well we've got that too.
1.
TIL there’s a cemetery in the Netherlands consisting of 8,300 US veterans who died in WWII. For the past 70 years, Dutch families have come to the cemetery every Sunday to care for a grave they adopted. Hundreds of people are currently on a waiting list to become caretakers.
2.
TIL that on the night that MTV launched, the opening sequence for the network featured footage of the Apollo 11 launch, simply because it was public domain and free to use. It was that opening sequence that connected MTVs image with astronauts, including the Video Music Award “moon man” trophy.
4.
TIL that elephants are tremendous distance swimmers. They can swim for up to six hours and 25 miles (48km). They are so buoyant that if they tire in the water, they can just rest by floating and will not sink. They can also use their trunk as a snorkel and dive.
5.
TIL in 1980 the FBI formed a fake company and attempted to bribe members of congress. Nearly 25% of those tested accepted the bribe, and were convicted.
6.
TIL the founder of Hyundai was born to an impoverished family of peasants in what is now North Korea. In 1998, he sent 1001 cows to his hometown in North Korea as a repayment 1000 times over for a cow that he stole in the early 1930s to afford his train ticket to Seoul and escape from poverty.
7.
TIL Prairie dog language is complex. They don’t just have a call for “danger”: their calls differentiate human, hawk, domesticated dog, coyote etc. and specify size & color. One study found that they can communicate “Here comes the short human in the yellow” (vs the tall human in blue) to each other
10.
TIL The holes in honeycombs don't actually start out as hexagons. Bees create circular tubes staggered with one another. The heat formed by the activity of the bees softens the wax, which connects the gaps between the holes. Then the wax hardens into the the most energy efficient shape, the hexagon.
13.
TIL in the 1790s, an Oxford student introduced using guano as fertiliser. He spread guano across the university lawn, using it to spell G U A N O. The lawn was soon scrubbed, but when spring came, the word GUANO was clearly visible, growing higher and thicker than the rest of the grass
14.
TIL that in during WW2, an American bomber -*ye olde pub*- was nearly shot down. A German fighter gave chase and once in range, he noticed the dead and injured crew and the terror in the pilots face. He didn’t attack and escorted the plane. Both pilots survived the war and finally met in 1990
17.
TIL the red stuff dropped from airplanes to put out forest fires also acts as a fertilizer.
18.
TIL in 2007, 33-year-old Steve Way weighed over 100kg, smoked 20 cigarettes a day & ate junk food regularly. In order to overcome lifestyle-related health issues, he started taking running seriously. In 2008, he ran the London Marathon in under 3 hours and, in 2014, he set the British 100 km record
19.
TIL of Ken Allen, a Borneo orangutan in the San Diego Zoo who escaped his enclosure three times. He never acted aggressively towards anyone during his escapes, and generally wandered around the zoo looking at other animals.
20.
TIL Not only do bats make high-pitched sounds for echolocation, many bat species also sing. A team of scientists that analyzed one species’ song translated it as a sequence that opens with a hello, then a gender identification, then some geographic information, & then a "let's talk" section.
21.
TIL The Tollund Man, who lived during the 4th Century BC, was so well preserved on discovery that that he was mistaken for a recent murder victim. His internal organs were intact; it was concluded that his last meal was porridge consisting of 40 kinds of seeds, eaten 12 to 24 hours before his death.
22.
TIL wild orangutans use medicinal plants to sooth joint and muscle inflammation. The apes chew leaves of the Dracaena cantleyi plant to create a white lather, which they then rub onto their bodies. Local indigenous people also use the plant for the same purpose.
23.
TIL The formal clothing of the Roman Citizen was the Toga. During Roman elections, those running for political office would rub their Toga with a dazzling white chalk to stand out. Called Toga Candida (pure-white) this clothing was the origin of the word "candidate".
26.
TIL research shows that mirrors in public places like retails stores will improve customer behavior by increasing self awareness. You won't act like a jerk if you had to watch yourself doing so.
29.
TIL in 1506, a 1000+ year old statue was unearthed. The main figure, Laocoön, was missing an arm. The pope commissioned a contest to find who would recreate the missing arm best. Michelangelo's version lost. In 1906 the original arm was found and in nearly the exact pose Michelangelo had sculpted.
30.
TIL at G.E. in the 1920s, as a joke, newly hired engineers would be told to develop an inside frosted lightbulb, which was believed to be impossible. In 1925, newly hired Marvin Pipkin got the assignment, and astonished his peers by succeeding.
31.
TIL that when future US President Lyndon B. Johnson was Senate majority leader, he instructed his staff to make his scotch and soda significantly weaker than his guest’s, so that he could keep a clearer head
32.
TIL three 13 year old girls submitted a script for "Tiny Toon Adventures". Producer Steven Spielberg was so impressed that he invited the girls to Hollywood to work on the episode and paid them $3,000. This later inspired a Simpsons episode where Bart and Lisa write an Itchy & Scratchy cartoon.
33.
TIL in Sierra Leone, before getting a driver's license, you have to buy a board game called "The Drivers' Way" and play it at least once. The game involves rolling stoplight-themed dice and moving models of classic cars around a board, together with answering questions about the country’s road laws
34.
TIL of Miguel Wattson, an electric eel from Tennessee with its own Twitter account. Whenever he discharges a large enough jolt, a tweet will be automatically send out to his account EelectricMiguel. Apart from sending tweets, he also helps power up Christmas trees at the aquarium.
36.
TIL scientists used 2,000 year old seeds to regrow an extinct species of date tree. The tree long disappeared from the Judean desert but archeologists found seeds on digs. Surprisingly, the seeds worked and grew a male and female of the species. They hope to use them to produce biblical era dates.
37.
TIL that Alan Alda met his wife of over 60 years at a dinner party when they were the only two guests who ate the rum cake after it fell on the kitchen floor.
38.
TIL that since 2014, Paul Rudd and Jeffrey Dean Morgan have been co-owners of Samuel's Sweet Shop, a candy store in the town of Rhinebeck, New York. They saved it from being closed after the previous owner, a friend of theirs, died suddenly.
39.
TIL when the Union abandoned a fort in Florida, they left behind a single soldier as caretaker. When the Confederacy marched on the fort, the lone soldier refused to surrender without a receipt for the fort. He received one, and the fort was taken without a shot fired.
40.
TIL that the founder of Old Bay seafood seasoning founded his own company after being fired by McCormick after two days on the job after they found out he was Jewish
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