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“Today I Learned”: 50 Interesting Facts About The World That Many Have Just Learned (New Posts)
Did you know that humans have been making our favorite TV snack, popcorn, for over 7000 years? It seems hilarious to imagine the first person seeing a solid corn kernel “explode” into a white, edible puff. While it often gets lost in the onslaught of information out there, the truth is that there are cool new details about our planet and universe being discovered every day.
We’ve gathered some fascinating facts about the world that people only stumbled across recently. So get comfortable as you read through, upvote your favorites and share your thoughts in the comments section below.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
Elephant (Tarra) and a dog (Bella) had become close friends at a sanctuary in Tennessee. Unfortunately, one day Bella was killed by coyotes, and Tarra found her body and carried it a mile back to the barn where the staff were.
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#2
When Fox refused to pay for Deadpool screenwriters Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick to be on set every day during filming, Ryan Reynolds paid with his own money to make sure they were there in order to keep the project on the right track & maintain the original creative team.
#3
Billy Idol was first choice for the role of T-1000 in Terminator 2, but a motorcycle accident in 1990 prevented it. During his time in hospital he also swore never to wear the Confederate flag again after a black employee explained his feelings on it.
#4
There was a real-life Lord of the Flies-esque situation where school boys were stuck on a deserted island for 15 months but the boys banded together rather than feuding.
Samuel Pelatan 5 months ago (edited)
Yup, otherwise our ancerstors wouldn't have survived and we wouldn't be here. Human together strong, human alone gets an infection or a cold, can't hunt/gather for 3 days, and dies.
#5
When the studio refused to meet Sienna Miller's pay request to star in the film 21 Bridges, Chadwick Boseman gave her part of his salary in order meet her number because he said "that's what you should be paid".
#6
That elephants stay cancer free as they have 20 copies of a key tumor-fighting gene; humans have just one.
#7
In parts of the UK, a rule from 1902 mandates that homes facing each other at the rear must be built 21 meters apart. This specific distance was determined by two urban designers who measured how far apart they could see each other's nipples through their shirts.
#8
Isidor Straus, co-owner of Macy's, and his wife Ida died on the Titanic after refusing a lifeboat to prioritize women and children.
Pittsburgh rare 5 months ago
There was a reference to them in the couple who is in bed in James's Cameron Titanic.
#9
The Luddites were not anti-technology. They were highly-skilled laborers who protested wage reduction and job replacement due to automation.
#10
Astronauts on board the ISS need to sleep near a ventilator fan. Warm air does not rise in space so astronauts in badly-ventilated sections end up surrounded by a bubble of carbon dioxide.
#11
During a screening of "A Fish Called Wanda," Danish audiologist Ole Bentzen died from heart fibrillation, caused by an increased heart rate due to extended laughter. Newspapers reported he died laughing. Writer John Cleese considered using it for publicity but ultimately deemed it inappropriate.
#12
In 2012 a British man named Wesley Carrington bought a metal detector and within 20 minutes found gold from the Roman Age worth £100,000.
#13
Stephen Hawking completed a final multiverse theory explaining how mankind might detect parallel universes just 10 days before he died.
#14
Scientists used a dating method to show a Viking ax cut trees on the North American continent exactly 1000 years ago, in 1021 C.E. This dating method uses a spike in solar radiation that left a mark in tree rings around the world. This proves the Vikings arrived before Christopher Columbus.
#15
when Domino’s Pizza entered the Italian market in 2015, the company had an ambitious plan of opening 880 outlets across the country by 2030. It got as far as opening 29 branches, that were all closed by 2022
#16
There are over 1,000 homes in Edinburgh, Scotland that nobody has lived in for over 10 years. The most common reason is a reclusive homeowner passing away and nobody realizing they've inherited the property.
#17
In 2022 seat belt use in the US was 91.6% of occupants (8.4% unrestrained) and unrestrained occupant deaths accounted for 49.8% of deaths.
#18
Columbia Pictures refused to greenlight the 1993 film Groundhog Day without explaining why Phil becomes trapped in the same day. Producer Trevor Albert and director Harold Ramis appeased the studio, but deliberately placed the scenes too late in the shooting schedule to be filmed.
#19
In 1968, over 6000 sheep were killed in Utah and popular theories pointed to the Army. It was revealed 30 years later that it was indeed the result of nerve agent testing. Families nearby developed nervous system illnesses, but the Army accepted no responsibility.
#20
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) was written by Robert Louis Stevenson during a 6-day [substance] binge. His wife Fanny said: "That an invalid in my husband's condition of health" was able to do "the manual labour alone of putting 60K words on paper in 6 days seems almost incredible".
#21
Possum Trot, a small town in Texas, adopted all the foster kids on a waiting list, eliminating the need for foster homes within a 100-mile radius.
Bored Birgit 5 months ago
It is now a film "Sound of hope". 22 families from a rural Black church adopted 77 kids from the foster system.
#22
Anne, Queen of Great Britain had at least 17 pregnancies over a 17-year period & had miscarried or given birth to stillborn children at least 12 times. Of her 5 liveborn children, 4 died before the age of two & her sole surviving child, Prince William, Duke of Gloucester, died at age eleven.
Little Wonder 5 months ago
This is why we think people didn't live as long in the past - children died so often and in such numbers it lowered the average age of death.
#23
In 1967 at the outbreak of the Six Day War the Suez Canal was shut down stranding fifteen ships, anchored together the crews formed a yachting club, held lifeboat races, and produced their own postage stamps — the ships would remain there until 1974.
Dumb teenager 5 months ago
At that piont they might as well have declared themselves an independent nation
#24
After actor Sean Astin turned 18, he left numerous personal items at his mother Patty Duke's house. Upon returning for them, many items, including the treasure map from "The Goonies," were gone. “It’s an item that would probably be worth $100,000 now,” he said. “And I think my mom threw it out.”
#25
Harrison Okene (a cook) survived 3 days at the bottom of the ocean in a sunken ship by finding an air pocket.
#26
After ABC executives & producers encouraged Margaret Cho to go on a crash diet, while filming her TV series All-American Girl in 1994, she lost 30 lbs (14 kg) in 2 weeks. This resulted in her hospitalization for kidney failure & led to major health issues that continued for years after the show.
troufaki13 5 months ago
Hollywood please stop imposing ridiculous beauty standards to your employees and consequently to the rest of the world.
#27
Juicero, a company that made a $699 juicer requiring Wi-Fi, an app, and QR-coded produce packs that had to be scanned and verified before juicing. Journalists found that the packs were easily squeezeable by hand, yielding the same results as the juicer. The company shut down shortly after.
#28
Most newborns cry for 45 minutes to two hours every day during the first six months of life because crying is the only way they communicate.
#29
A study where monkeys were shown to be willing to pay (sacrificing food) for risque photos of other monkeys.
#30
That the Wizard of OZ is only the 1st of 14 original works, and a total of 40 books in a series about the Land of OZ.
#31
That in 1956 the canals in Venice, Italy were drained and cleaned.
#32
Buzz Aldrin battled depression and alcohol addiction after the Moon landing.
Samuel Pelatan 5 months ago (edited)
I kinda get it. When your goal is that encompassing you need something to replace it after you reached it. Otherwise you've got a lot of void to stare at.
#33
A mathematics professor at Stanford University was [unalived] by his doctoral student who had been trying to get a PhD for 19 years.
#34
Bob The Builder was altered for Japanese children so they wouldn’t confuse him for a Yakuza member.
#35
Michelangelo spent two months hiding in the underground chamber while evading a death sentence ordered by the Pope.
#36
During the 1920s, Guinness was recommended to pregnant women due to the perceived high iron content of the drink.
Little Wonder 5 months ago
Yep, a pint a day was recommended to a lot of people for medical reasons. There's barely any iron in Guinness, btw.
#37
A pizzeria owner discovered DoorDash was conducting a "demand test" and had a lower price for his pizza even though he had not asked for the pizzeria to be on the app. The owner ordered 10 pizzas on the app, paid $160, and had them delivered to a friend. DoorDash paid the restaurant $240.
Emma London 5 months ago
That wouldn't fly in EU. Adding individual restaurants in you ordering service for free sounds like a good idea, BUT it's purpose is to gain a monopoly in the area and then rise the prices after the customers have learned to use only them.
#38
During “Hell week” of Navy SEAL training, candidates are given no more than 4 hours sleep over five and a half days, all while under continual mental and physical stress.
#39
Elizabeth I had a lot of missing teeth from eating too much sweets, making it difficult for foreign ambassadors to understand what she was saying.
#40
A computer study of over a million samples of normal English prose found that the longest word one is likely to encounter on an everyday basis is 'uncharacteristically' at 20 letters.
#41
From 1970 to 2015, The Sun published a picture of a topless female model on its page 3.
Onan Hag All 5 months ago
Sam Fox, Melinda Messenger, Linda Lusardi, Jodie Marsh.. Fond memories, (fond mammaries?)
#42
Six-year-old Cao Qixian set a new women's world record by solving a 3x3x3 Rubik's Cube in an average time of 5.97 seconds. She became the first female ever to achieve an average time of under 6 seconds.
SlightlyTarnished 5 months ago
I don't get why the differentiation between the sexes, it's a puzzle, not olympic shot putting.
#44
The Prussian language, which has been extinct since the 17th century, is slowly being revived, and for the first time, children are growing up with it as their first language.
#45
Human Genome Project started in 1990 and by 2003, scientists had successfully documented 92% of the genome. However, it would take until 2022 before the final 8% was mapped and a full human genome was completely sequenced.
marianne eliza 5 months ago (edited)
Most animals have genes that do the same thing in any species. Like 2 eyes, ears, a nose and mouth. Food goes in one end and out the other. And so on. So it was probably easy to ID those genes. It's the ones that made us humans were the tough ones. BTW bananas and humans share roughly 50-60% of our DNA. Cats 90%. Dogs 84%. Pigs 98%.
#46
The capital of Canada once alternated between Toronto and Québec every four years. Queen Victoria selected Ottawa in 1857 because it sits far from the American border and it is situated on a cliff, making it easier to defend from a possible attack.
Blayze Infyrno 5 months ago
Well ok, the PROVINCE of Canada, before Confederation. And before that, Kingston. Ottawa was ultimately chosen because it's on the border of Ontario and Quebec, the two original provinces of the country of Canada.
#47
Frank Zappa’s son was born, the nurse refused to register him with the name “Dweezil,” so Zappa started listing names of musicians he knew, which became his son’s legal name(s). When Dweezil was five, his parents fought to legally change his name to Dweezil at his request and won.
#48
Every even number is the sum of two primes, according to the Goldbach Conjecture, which has been verified up to 19 digits.
#49
In 1590, starving Parisians ground human bones into bread.
#50
When Napoleon surrendered after Waterloo he assumed he would be allowed to see out his exile comfortably as a foreign monarch in Britain, writing to the Prince Regent to ask "for a country house ‘about ten or twelve leagues from London – a big enough house to accommodate all my suite’."
What do you think ?
ConstantlyJon 5 months ago
As always, take anything on TIL with a grain of salt. Welcome to the internet. Stay safe, friends.
Bexxxx 5 months ago
Exactly, if anything piques your interest please do your own research first folks
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ConstantlyJon 5 months ago
As always, take anything on TIL with a grain of salt. Welcome to the internet. Stay safe, friends.
Bexxxx 5 months ago
Exactly, if anything piques your interest please do your own research first folks
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