“Today I Learned”: 67 Interesting Facts People Suddenly Stumble Upon
You’re never too old to learn something new. I love discovering fascinating facts whenever I can, and one of my favorite places to find them is the Today I Learned subreddit, a community dedicated to sharing those surprising, mind-blowing bits of knowledge that make you stop and think, “wait, really?”
Here are the most interesting revelations people have shared there.
1.
“TIL after a man fell in the snow in his backyard & broke his neck, his dog helped save his life by keeping him warm and alert by lying on his body and licking his face & hands for 20 hours until a neighbor finally stopped by and rushed him to the hospital. After surgery, he was able to walk again.”
2.
“TIL about BACA, a biker gang that will defend kids who were abused or bullied, give them their own vest, take them the school, and will even guard a house 24/7 to make sure the kid can sleep”
3.
“TIL that the Switzerlands largest supermarket Migros, doesn’t sell alcohol or tobacco in stores, pays no dividends, caps profits by lowering prices if earnings exceeds 5%, is a cooperative with 2M+ members, and donates 1% of revenue to social projects, purely out of the founders moral philosophy.”
4.
“TIL Queen Elizabeth once hid in a bush with her corgis to avoid talking to Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife.”
5.
“TIL that playing high-level chess causes players to burn calories at an athletic rate. For example, 21-year-old Grandmaster Mikhail Antipov was recorded burning 560 calories in just two hours of sitting—roughly what Roger Federer would burn in an hour of singles tennis.”
6.
“TIL about the Matilda effect. It’s a phenomenon where the achievements of women scientists and inventors get attributed to men.”
7.
“TIL a bus driver in Paris kicked all the passengers out when they refused to make space for a wheelchair bound man”
8.
“TIL in 2015 an Australian woman put a bet on a horse at 100-1 and won $825, she then took a selfie with the winning bet slip, posted it to Facebook, somebody saw it and put the barcode into an automated betting machine and stole her winnings.”
via reddit
9.
“TIL in ‘Cast Away’, none of the sound on the island scenes is real. The loudness of ocean waves on the actual inhabited island they were filming on was so overwhelming that every sound on the island and ocean scenes, including Tom Hanks’ monologues, were carefully recorded in a studio.”
10.
“TIL that 44% of the world’s adult population has never consumed alcohol”
11.
“TIL that In 2015, that a three-story tall lamp post became so corroded by urine that it snapped and fell over, crushing a nearby car.”
via reddit
12.
“TIL before 9/11, US airports were public social hubs where you could walk to the gate, eat at food courts, and watch planes without a ticket or ID.”
13.
“TIL that slaveholders in the US knew that enslaved people were escaping to Mexico, the U.S. tried to get Mexico to sign a fugitive slave treaty, but Mexico refused to sign such a treaty, insisting that all enslaved people were free once they set foot on Mexican soil.”
14.
“TIL that the movie ‘South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut’ was supposed to be rated NC-17 due to excessive profanity, with the f word being used 146 times alone. The MPAA said that 400 or more swear words would get the NC-17 rating, so Matt Stone and Trey Parker cut the number in script to 399”
15.
“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.”
16.
“TIL a Burger King cook (who’d worked there for 24 years) was fired for taking home a sandwich, fries & a drink after her manager claimed she had only asked permission for a sandwich & accused her of stealing. However, a judge ruled that the cook did not intend to steal the food & awarded her $46,000”
17.
“TIL that some urban birds like finches and sparrows use cigarette butts as a form of pest control for their nests. The nicotine in the cigarettes helps keep parasites away.”
via reddit
18.
TIL The 2021 Razzie Awards had a special category for “Worst Performance by Bruce Willis in a 2021 Movie,” with all eight of his performances that year being nominated. Four days after the awards ceremony, Willis’ family announced his aphasia diagnosis.
19.
“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.”
20.
“TIL about the ‘McEmbassy.’ Every McDonald’s in Austria has a 24-hour hotline to the US Embassy to help American travellers who are in distress or have lost their passports.”
21.
“TIL that ‘black boxes’ on airplanes are legally required to be orange.”
22.
“TIL that during his time as the narrator for the US version of the first four seasons of the children’s TV show Thomas the Tank Engine, George Carlin spoke his lines to a teddy bear in the booth because he was nervous about performing without an audience.”
via reddit
23.
“TIL that Kansai International Airport in Japan reached its 30th year of service without having ever lost a single piece of luggage.”
24.
“TIL Christopher Columbus made significant errors in estimating the distance to Asia. If the Americas didn’t exist, then he’d have ran out of food and passed long before reaching Japan.”
25.
“TIL that salted raw celery used to be the third most popular dish on New York menus and more expensive than caviar due to issues with growing it.”
26.
“TIL the mother of the last Comanche chief was a white woman who was kidnapped at age 9 & assimilated into the tribe. She later married a chieftain & bore him 3 children before she was found at age 33 & returned to her bio-family. She never accepted white society & committed suicide by starvation.”
via reddit
27.
“TIL Apple recently paid $95 million because Siri was caught eavesdropping on private conversations, like doctor visits and illegal deals, then sending those recordings for human contractors to listen to. Siri was triggered not just by ‘Hey Siri,’ but by phrases that sounded similar like ‘seriously.'”
28.
“TIL about a soda machine offering ‘mystery’ drinks operated for nearly 20 years, but no one knew who operated it or kept it stocked.”
29.
“TIL Takeru Kobayashi retired from competitive eating because he says he no longer feels hunger or fullness.”
30.
“TIL we know where China’s first emperor is buried, but his 2,200-year-old tomb—described as containing a scale model of China with rivers of mercury—has never been opened.”
31.
“TIL that by 400 BC, Persians had developed Yakhchal, Ancient Refrigerators capable of storing solid ice in the summer in the desert.”
via reddit
32.
“TIL that moon dust (lunar regolith) is electrically charged and will stick to anything it comes into contact with. It’s also likely toxic to humans. Apollo astronauts regularly complained of coughing, watery eyes, throat irritation and blurry vision after each foray onto the moon’s surface”
33.
“TIL a woman nicknamed the ‘Rooftop Ninja’ lived for about a year inside a sign on the roof of a Family Fare grocery store in Midland, Michigan. Inside the sign, she had a computer, printer, desk, and coffee maker. She was discovered by a contractor who noticed an extension cord running into the sign”
34.
“TIL that Michigan police once rounded up a group of local drug dealers by inviting them to the fake wedding of two of the dealers’ regular customers, who were really undercover police officers. The arrests got underway after the band (also undercover police officers) played ‘I Fought the Law’.”
via reddit
35.
TIL … about the Rice Hypothesis which posits cultures that engaged in wet rice farming that requires coordinated irrigation and synchronized planting tend to be collectivist while wheat farming cultures evolved to be more individualistic.
36.
“TIL the ‘Invisible Gorilla’ experiment which fooled most people. In a famous 1999 study, participants watched a video of people passing a basketball and were asked to count passes. Midway through, a person in a gorilla suit walked through the scene and half of participants didn’t notice the gorilla.”
37.
“TIL that in 2011, a woman drowned and remained at the bottom of a busy Massachusetts public pool for two days, hidden by cloudy water”
38.
“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.”
– imsiq
39.
“TIL Oreo has to call the white center “creme” instead of “cream” because the FDA does not allow manufacturers to use the word “cream” to describe a food that contains no cream at all.”
via reddit
40.
“TIL Rio de Janeiro was once the capital of Portugal. Following the conquest of Portugal by Napoleon, the Portuguese royal family fled to Brazil (1808-1821). They then established the capital of Portugal in Rio de Janeiro.”
via reddit
41.
“TIL a man forgot that he had stashed $100,000 inside a 1980s TV set until the cash was returned to him 30 years later after a recycling plant worker dismantled the TV and found it. The man had forgotten the cash was inside the TV when he gave it away to a family friend many years earlier.”
42.
“TIL 7-year-old Bonnie Lohman went to the store with her stepdad & saw her own face on a milk carton. She asked to keep the image & was allowed to on the condition she kept it a secret. However after her neighbors saw the image & reported it, she learned that her mom had kidnapped her when she was 3.”
43.
“TIL In Portugal it’s illegal for your boss to call outside work hours. The employer must respect the privacy of the worker, including periods of rest and family time. Any violation, it constitutes a serious offense and could result in a fine.”
44.
“TIL a Dollar General employee who was told she couldn’t keep drinks at the cash register was fired after taking and drinking a $1.69 orange juice to stave off diabetic shock. Despite her paying for the orange juice afterward, the company said she was ‘grazing’. Later, a jury awarded her $277,565.”
45.
“TIL about Odin, a dog who refused to evacuate during the 2017 California wildfires. When his owners returned days later, they found him alive and still guarding his entire flock of 8 goats”
46.
“TIL Canadians sent 5 tonnes of maple syrup to thank a Norwegian coach who gave a Canadian skier a spare pole after she broke hers mid-race, which led to Canada winning a silver medal at the 2006 Winter Olympics”
47.
“TIL that two buttons in WWII RAF uniform can be put together to make a mini compass which indicates towards north.”
via reddit
48.
“TIL in the Red Sea, giant moray eels have been observed hunting cooperatively with coral groupers. The grouper approaches an eel’s hiding place and shakes its head rapidly to indicate that it wants to hunt. The eel recognizes the signal and accompanies it on the hunt where they work in tandem.”
via reddit
49.
“TIL the wolves/dogs used to film The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (2005) had to have CGI butts/tails because they were too happy to appear menacing.”
via reddit
50.
“TIL that figure skater Mabel Fairbanks, who was was banned from rinks as a child due to her African American and Native American ancestry, went on to coach skating greats like Scott Hamilton, Kristi Yamaguchi, and Debi Thomas, and was the first African American in the US Figure Skating Hall of Fame.”
via reddit
51.
“TIL the crawfish farming industry in Louisiana grew after rice farmers began breeding them in their rice fields. They realized that they could farm crawfish throughout the year without it affecting their rice. It also served as an extra source of income for them.”
via reddit
52.
“TIL that, on average, half of all service dogs fail their training. Due to this poor rate, South Korea experimented with cloning service dogs that had already passed their training. The resulting clones passed at rates much higher than average.”
via reddit
53.
“TIL Miranda Gibson lived on a small platform 60 metres above the ground in a 400-year-old Eucalyptus tree to protect the surrounding forest. A bush fire forced her to evacuate after 449 days but Tasmania’s Wilderness World Heritage Area was officially extended by 170,000 hectares a few months later.”
via reddit
54.
“TIL 45 years ago, ahi (tuna) were caught for fun and ground into pet food. In Japan, tuna was called neko-matagi, meaning ‘fish that even a cat would disdain’.”
via via reddit
55.
“TIL that the Animal Planet reality series ‘River Monsters’ ended because star Jeremy Wade was able to catch essentially every exceptionally large freshwater fish species on earth, leaving no remaining content for the show.”
via reddit
56.
“TIL that Iceland was once covered in trees until the Vikings came and cut them down to make room for sheep.”
via reddit
57.
“TIL Freshwater snails are one of the world’s most deadly animals because they transmit the organism that causes schistosomiasis (aka bilharzia), which is, in and of itself, one of the most deadly parasites on the planet! Nearly 230m people were infected in 2014 and there are~200,000 deaths annually.”
via reddit
58.
“TIL Women have been legally allowed to go topless in public in New York City since 1992.”
via reddit
59.
“TIL that smokers whose insula got damaged after a stroke were able to quit smoking easily one day after the stroke, with no relapse and urges, suggesting that this brain region might play a role in nicotine addiction.”
via reddit
60.
“TIL that during a murder trial in 1994 an English jury got drunk and consulted an Ouija board to determine the killer. This led to a retrial.”
via reddit
61.
“TIL that a proposed 1896 Pennsylvania law required motorists who encountered livestock to: stop their vehicle, disassemble it, and conceal the parts until the livestock were sufficiently pacified.”
via reddit
62.
“TIL that in 1429, King Charles VII of France exempted the town of Domrémy from paying taxes ‘forever’, after a promise to Joan of Arc. Taxes were imposed again during the French Revolution.”
via reddit
63.
“TIL about Frieda Caplan, a pioneer in the world of produce who built a successful business in the 1960s by promoting items that, at the time, were relatively unheard of in the U.S. such as mangoes, shallots, and a New Zealand fruit originally called ‘Chinese gooseberry,’ which she dubbed the kiwi.”
via reddit
64.
“TIL that during a college football game in US, many people gathered upon the roof of a glass blowing factory to watch for free. The roof collapsed, spilling fans onto a furnace. Twenty-three people were killed but the game continued. The event is known as The Thanksgiving Day Disaster.”
via reddit
65.
“TIL that dingoes were brought to Australia by humans around 4,000 years ago, and are actually an ancient breed of domestic dog.”
via reddit
66.
“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.”
67.
“TIL Eurypterids, an order of arthropods completely wiped out by the world’s biggest mass extinction, were scorpion-like giants that could reach almost ten feet in length.”
via reddit