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50 Surprising Facts From “Today I Learned” That Show How Little We Actually Know (New Facts)
One thing about knowledge is that it shouldn’t be gatekept. And on Reddit’s Today I Learned community, it isn’t.
Here, millions of people come together to share the most surprising, obscure, and fascinating facts they’ve just discovered. Some change how we see the world, while others are simply entertaining—but all of them prove there’s always more to learn.
So here’s your daily dose of curiosity. Keep the cycle going and pass your favorites along!
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
TIL about Andrew Carnegie, the original billionaire who spent 90% of his fortune creating over 3000 libraries worldwide because a free library was how he gained the education to become wealthy.
David 10 months ago
90% was all charitable money. He also build orphanages, soup kitchens, churches, and more. He left his wife and only daughter $40 million at the time and his mansions, so they could live in comfort for the rest of their lives. He did more than just libraries.
Beef Brisket 10 months ago
True, but unfortunately, Carnegie made that wealth on the backs of the people who worked in his mills, for low pay, long hours, and conditions that were horrific, even for the times. When his laborers wanted to unionize he suppressed them with violence. When criticized by many for his workers miserable conditions and wages, while keeping his profits high, he shot back that, given more money, the workers would just spend it on richer food and nicer clothes, making them--and society--worse off. My point is that no one is all good or all bad--not Elon, not Carnegie.
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Zoey Bear 10 months ago
I wish Ebon and his Trump minions would go and move to Mars and bring all their cult followers with them. PLEAESE!!!
Nikole 10 months ago
Wouldn’t that be lovely?? I’m so sick of this stupidity. We’re being dismantled and all federal protections removed.
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Dave Van Beurden 10 months ago
And he helped fund a building in The Hague where I hope Musk, Tr*mp and their cronies end up!
fly on the wall 10 months ago
At least they should pay the same percentage of tax on earnings as "regular folk".
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Connie Martin 10 months ago
On the flip side, he was a union buster and absolutely brutal to his workers. Maybe he thought the libraries would get him into heaven. They are an undeniable good
RELATED:
#2
TIL Danny Trejo has a clause in his movie contracts that requires his villainous characters to die by the end of the film. He wants children to learn that crime doesn't pay.
Kali Chaos 10 months ago
Man is a legend. He randomly pulled a car off a kid while out shopping. And his taco cookbook is legit.
ninjaTrashPandaBoom 10 months ago
His tacos are great. If you get a chance, try Trejo's Tacos, highly recommend!
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Beak Hookage 10 months ago
A fine example of healthy, non-toxic masculinity. And it's really inspiring how he turned his life around and is now helping kids who are in the same situation he once was.
Stan Brooks 10 months ago
I've always enjoyed Mr Trejo in films and it is good to know he is a good person as well as a goood actor.
glowworm2 10 months ago
On the flip side, the Rock has one that requires that he never loses a fight.
Beak Hookage 10 months ago (edited)
I recall hearing it was the same with Steven Segal.
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Michael Largey 10 months ago
This also frees him from being pressured to appear in any sequels.
Riley Quinn 10 months ago
Much respect for this man, but Danny think about this for a moment. No child should be watching your movies, whether your character dies or not./lol
#3
TIL April 8th 1945 a prisoner at Buchenwald rigged up a radio transmitter and sent a message in a desperate attempt to contact the allies for rescue. 3 minutes after his message the US Army answered "KZ Bu. Hold out. Rushing to your aid. Staff of Third Army". The camp would be liberated 3 days later.
G R 10 months ago
FYI the prisoner who made the radio survived, was liberated, and lived till his 70s. His radio calls were essential in letting the Allies know the location and other crucial information about the camp:
Michelle C 10 months ago
God bless that man for his bravery and heroism! God bless the United States Armed Forces for responding to the call.
Russell Bowman 10 months ago
3rd Army, led by General Patton ... who was (in)famous for yelling at/inspiring his troops ... one can only imagine.
Bored Seagull 10 months ago
KZ is the German abbreviation for Konzentrationslager, called a concentration camp in English. "Bu" is likely an abbreviation for Buchenwald, so "KZ Bu" is "concentration camp Buchenwald".
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marianne eliza 10 months ago
They didn't ignore the reports. They had to choose whether to bomb the camps, giving away the fact that they had broken the Axis codes, and ending a lot of innocent people, and then having Axis powers change all their codes so they could no longer know what was going to happen.
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#4
TIL ecologist Suzanne Simard wanted to know why the forest got sick every time the foresters k****d the birch trees, thought to harm fir trees. She discovered that birch trees actually pass nutrients to fir trees underground via a complex fungal network and were maintaining balance in the ecosystem.
Geoffrey Scott 10 months ago
I have a guy I cut lawn for. He wished to expand his lakefront lot by removing a bunch of undergrowth as well as some Birch. I was able to convince him that the birches were rare enough he should keep some.
Regina Holt 10 months ago
This works in the animal kingdom, also. You remove on species, and the others are affected. There is a big diffence in environments when wolves or beavers are reintroduced into an area where they had been wiped out. But these trees? Why did the think the birch trees were harmful to fir trees? We need to understand what we are doing to the environment.
Joe Reaves 9 months ago
Just let nature do it's thing people. It's evolved over millions of years to find the best methods and we're arrogant enough to think we know better?
#5
TIL After Joan of Arc was executed on charges of heresy, her mother spent 25 years clearing her name. She convinced the pope to reopen Joan's case and attended the retrial despite being in her 70s and in poor health. The retrial ended with Joan's complete acquittal.
Larry Kearney 10 months ago
Like that means so much after the church, you know, f***ing burned her to death
StPaul9 10 months ago
Technically the Burgundians (fighting for the English) handed her over to the English and their appointed bishop. The English had her locked in prison with men's clothes and none of her own. The choices were wear the male clothing and go against nature or go without and be charged with immorality. The Pope was powerless. He said 'Nah' to all the case and retracted it and threatened excommunication if anyone had a problem. The fact that she was seen was being praised as a saint before her beatification and canonisation speaks volumes.
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Peter Bear 10 months ago
Fun fact; the only formal crime she was ever actually found guilty of with was... wait for it... wearing male clothing.
Michael Largey 10 months ago
So it was politics disguised as piety. Glad people don't fall for that these days.
Lorraine R 10 months ago
Also, that was when some of the younger sons of noble families were expected to make a career as a cleric, regardless of their personal piety or inclination, so the Church ended up with a lot of clerics who were in it for wealth and power, rather than serving God's people.
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Uncle Schmickle 9 months ago
They didn't want a woman becoming too popular. But it backfired and she became a martyr.
Bryan Wright 9 months ago
The church is one of the most corrupt institutions around, and has been for hundreds of years.
#6
TIL In Japan, the Johatsu, meaning "evaporated people", choose to abandon their current lives - due to family strain, work pressure or any other reason. So-called 'night moving' companies help them disappear without a trace and start a new life somewhere else.
Ashlie Benson 10 months ago
Because I Googled johatsu, TIL Japan has no missing persons database.
WindySwede 10 months ago
First you go into a vacuum cleaners shop, and use the right phrase...
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Scott Rackley 10 months ago
I'd love to disappear from here and become a toolmaker in Sapporo. I have the skills.
Billo66 10 months ago
The Sheriff comes and sets all your stuff out on the lawn for free!
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#7
TIL in 2010 a doctor and his son just happened to be walking by an apartment building in Paris when a 15-month-old boy fell 80ft (24m) from a seventh floor balcony before bouncing off a cafe awning into the doctor's arms. His catch helped the boy escape "miraculously without a single scratch."
The toddler had been left alone with his four-year-old sister while their parents reportedly "popped out" for some shopping. They were charged with causing injury through neglect.
Bensignor, 58, a GP, said it was pure luck he was passing while out walking with his seven-year-old son Raphaël, last week.
...
Bensignor said it was thanks to Raphaël that he saved the falling child.
"We were walking and Raphaël was talking to me ... then he looked up and said: 'Papa, have you seen the children on the balcony up there?' There was no panic in his voice, just astonishment."
He said he looked up just as the baby fell.
David 10 months ago
"miraculously without a single scratch." "They were charged with causing injury through neglect." Your Honor, as per the good doctor's testimony, my client is innocent. LOL I'm guessing the actual wording of the law includes neglect that doesn't cause a physical injury.
Andrew Keir 10 months ago
Drunks and children ... both tend to survive where adults would die, reputedly because they don't 'know' to tense up when they fall and therefore hit the ground softer. But ... 7 storeys ... someone should buy that baby a lottery ticket ... and one for Raphael as well
veirdbuttrue 10 months ago
This is the best!! I seriously hope the parents clean up their act.
#8
TIL that 11-year old Ted Danson and his friends chopped down a bunch of billboards around Flagstaff, AZ, because they obstructed views of nature. He was caught when his father, a museum curator, learned that billboards for the Museum of Northern Arizona were spared.
marianne eliza 10 months ago
That dad is a father. You don't do your kids any favors by covering up their crimes.
Load More Replies... Andrew Keir 10 months ago
"I think that I will never see / a billboard lovely as a tree. / Perhaps, unless the billboards fall / I'll never see a tree at all" - Ogden Nash
Glen Ellyn 10 months ago
I still remember Lady Bird Johnson and her "Highway Beautification Act." Informally known as "Lady Bird's Bill," it was signed into law by her husband Lyndon B Johnson, who first entered the presidency after the 1963 assassination of President John F Kennedy. ****She broke new ground for First Ladies by interacting directly with Congress to advocate for the bill. Lady Bird believed that beauty, and generally clean streets, would make the U.S. a better place to live. -_-_-_ The bill called for control of outdoor advertising, including removal of certain types of signs, along the nation's growing Interstate Highway System and the existing federal-aid primary highway system. It also required certain junkyards along Interstate or primary highways to be removed or screened and encouraged scenic enhancement and roadside development. I'd say she had the right idea.
Dorothy Smith 9 months ago
Yes, and with a drawl..plant a tree, a shrub or a bush! And I do every year still.
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Child of the Stars 10 months ago
Danson was on the board of the MoNA for a long time, too. I believe he still makes regular donations. (I live in Flag, and my kids and I go frequently.)
Kalikima 10 months ago
I've never heard of it, and I'm always looking for a good place to take my son (I'm on the river, by Laughlin). What's in the museum there?
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#9
TIL in 2017 a couple survived a wildfire in California by jumping into a neighbors pool and staying submerged for 6 hours. They came up for air only when they needed to, using wet t-shirts to shield their faces from falling embers.
Nice Beast Ludo 10 months ago
That must have been absolutely TERRIFYING!!! Better than being burned, obviously, but did the water get very hot from the fire? I would be so scared the water would start to get to boiling and then what do you do? They were lucky and brave
Zaach 10 months ago
The water would only be heated by convection which would only affect the surface. An interesting example is a wine chiller which can chill a bottle of white in 10 minutes - it does this by circulating the water so the warmed water is moved away so cooler water can carry off more heat
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Riley Quinn 10 months ago
The deaths of all those animals and insects, and their habitats, falls squarely on human negligence and stubborn denial of climate change. 60yrs is a long time to ring the alarm of climate change, yet too many people can't hear it.
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Nikki Gross 10 months ago
There was 3 people that lived in an apartment complex that survived the Lahaina Fire. They jumped into the swimming pool that was in the recreation area, because they became trapped and stayed there until they were rescued by Firefighters. They managed to get a couple of 911 calls out before they had to get into the pool, so Search and Rescue was able to locate them.
Cybele Spanjaard 9 months ago
Terrifying and amazing the pool water did not heat up and scald them as well.
Frieda Stafford 10 months ago
Wildfires can move very fast, and the wind can shift unexpectedly.
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The Other Guest 9 months ago
Source? It takes a tremendous amount of energy to heat water, especially in the quantity needed to fill a swimming pool.
Load More Replies... #10
TIL George Washington decided to step down after two terms because he feared he might die in office and Americans would then view the presidency as a lifetime appointment.
Hidalgo 10 months ago (edited)
A lifelong term was actually preferred by some of the Founders like Hamilton. It was argued about extensively and the arguments are documented in the Federalist Papers
Kali Chaos 10 months ago
I love smart people that educate me about history. Not sarcasm, I really do appreciate learning new things.
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Peter Bear 10 months ago
And some 250 years later, Donald Trump is trying to do the exact opposite.
MyNameIsNotAPortent 10 months ago
Must say, I am on board with Trump dying in office.
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David 10 months ago
And it wasnt until after FDR that the US put in term limits of 2, as FDR was the first president to hold a third term, and the second to ever try it (his uncle and cousin, TR tried in 1912 a comeback)
BeesEelsAndPups 10 months ago
Don't call it a comeback. He's been here for years, rockin' his peers, puttin' suckers in fear.
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Trisec Tebeakesse 10 months ago
Unfortunately, this became so - Senators and Representatives mostly serve until they leave office feetfirst.
The Darkest Timeline 10 months ago
No, they don’t. Most of them leave for lucrative work in the private sector (thanks, regulatory capture!), retire, or lose their reelection bids.
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Willem Andries Oosterhof 10 months ago
Thank you George. Would be a nightmare waiting for Trump to die in office.
BeesEelsAndPups 10 months ago
I mean he's 78, morbidly obese, eats like a teenage boy, and exercises once a decade. I can't imagine he'll live all that long. That said, he's already said he's going to run for a 3rd term, and he's not interested in what the Constitution says about that, or anything else.
Load More Replies... #11
TIL Chef Boyardee's canned Ravioli kept WWII soldiers fed and he became the largest supplier of rations during the war. When American soldiers started heading to Europe to fight, Hector Boiardi and brothers Paul and Mario decided to keep the factory open 24/7 in order to produce enough meals.
DE Ray 10 months ago
People who only know the cheap canned pasta really miss out on the fact Boiardi was a top chef - really one of the first "celebrity chefs" in the US.
BrunoVI 10 months ago (edited)
So much low-quality American food (Wonder bread, "American" cheese, Spam, margarine) became popularized as WW2 rations, and people developed a fondness or nostalgia for it. The most shameful is margarine, which is absolutely terrible for you, but unbelievably bad government research claimed was better for you than butter: The government found a correlation between cholesterol and heart disease, but it was a secondary correlation between cholesterol with saturated fat, and saturated fat with heart disease; and the saturated fat found in margarine is so much worse than the saturated fat found in butter.
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Trisec Tebeakesse 10 months ago
He is one of the very few Westerners that was awarded the Order of Lenin by the Soviet Union - primarily because they ate that canned ravioli, too!
marianne eliza 10 months ago (edited)
I (64f) have recently returned to one of my childhood comfort foods, Beefaroni mixed with bean-less chili. Topped with crushed unsalted top saltine crackers.
Nikki Gross 10 months ago (edited)
If you were poor back in the 80's and 90's then Chef Boyardee, Ramen Noodles, Bologna or Velveeta cheese sandwiches and PB&J's is what we lived off of in the Summer. Mom had to work, so whichever Sister that was home with us, was the ONLY one allowed to use the stove. Until we were 13 years old and passed Mom's tests the stove was off limits. When Mom was able to scrape together enough money to buy our first microwave oven, it was like a whole new world opened up for us.
Budge 9 months ago
I remember the same foods. And dinner was Hamburger Helper. As a 23-yo divorced mom, my son and I ate lots of beef/rice/gravy. Now we gag thinking about it.
Load More Replies... Cydney Golden 9 months ago
I remember eating it in the 60s...it was not disgusting but I hadn't started cooking and going to nice restaurants yet.
Dusty's mom 9 months ago
In not one memoir of WWII veterans have I ever read about canned ravioli. I've read over 100. It must not have been as memorable as SPAM.
Mary Kelly 10 months ago
the canned stuff is awful, but it is nostalgic for me....i get it once avery 6-7 years
#12
TIL George Washington is the only U.S. president elected as an independent to date. Washington opposed the development of political parties.
Michelle C 10 months ago
He warned against them explicitly in his farewell address. No wonder!
JoMeBee 10 months ago
How is it with harder to access information and way less prior examples, the founding fathers were so much smarter than today's leaders? Moral code? Lobbyists & money? Simplicity?
Load More Replies... Peter Bear 10 months ago
Political parties are fine. The fundamental trouble is with a bipartisan system, because it always turns into 'us vs them' no matter which side you're on, and independent thinkers are condemned as traitors by both sides.
El hefe 10 months ago
Too bad he isn't around to help with this shît show that we have created
Sara Shamsabadi 10 months ago
right?? Cuz life was so stable in his day lol
Load More Replies... Michael Largey 10 months ago
While not calling himself one, Washington was essentially a Federalist. In fact, he was effectively the leader and founder of that party.
Learner Panda 10 months ago
Looking at the political situation now, I am very worried for the entire world.
Ron Man 10 months ago
Again, if you are a US citizen and didn't know this, you weren't paying attention in school.
2WheelTravlr 10 months ago (edited)
Unless you have perfect recall, most of us did learn these things but then forgot them. I've -re-learned so many things as an adult and they've stuck with me because I now have a much more complete world view.
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#13
TIL that Weird Al's Phantom Menace parody 'The Saga Begins' was recorded a month before the film released in May 1999. Yankovic was denied an early screening by Lucasfilm, but managed to almost exactly piece together the plot by researching rumours posted on Star Wars fan forums.
Firefly 10 months ago
It's my favorite song of his, and I prefer it to American Pie.
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Lulu 9 months ago
FUN FACT he voiced the banana guy from the Wander Over Yonder episode "Boy Wander". I'm not sure what the episode is called exactly (It's been a while) But still!
Sailing Leprechaun 9 months ago
He also voiced Probabilitor in Gravity Falls
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Aud (she/they) 9 months ago
Oh my god I have had this song stuck in my head all morning, even though I haven't listened to it for months.
#14
TIL about skeuomorphism, when modern objects, real or digital, retain features of previous designs even when they aren't functional. Examples include the very tiny handle on maple syrup bottles, faux buckles on shoes, the floppy disk 'save' icon, or the sound of a shutter on a cell phone camera.
Nice Beast Ludo 10 months ago
I wonder if you put those 4 things in a list if anyone could guess the similarity
David 10 months ago (edited)
The "shutter" sound is artificial these days but I wouldn't say the sound is not "functional". It is there to alert people that someone is taking photos. Granted, it doesn't help with video. I seem to recall reading about some place with stricter rules than US regarding photographing strangers in public where by law the sound could not be disabled. Unsure if that was accurate.
FlamingZombies 10 months ago
That's Japan where the shutter sound can't be disabled. The reason is to deter people taking upskirt photos.
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Lady Eowyn 10 months ago
Oh God I hate those! I won't buy jeans without pockets.
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Diolla 10 months ago
Now I am curious what the function of the tiny maple bottle handle used to be.
Rednose 10 months ago
Handle on an earthenware jug, used before glass replaced it.
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Amy Lee 10 months ago
This is specifically for designed products not organic things. Someone has to choose to use something that would otherwise be obsolete. I suppose it could be argued that it becomes a design feature?
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UKGrandad 10 months ago
Yes. They were used by wealthy people in place of ribbons to fasten shoes, from around the middle of the 17th. Century up to the mid-19th. Century.
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Rick Murray 10 months ago
Hey! I like those dinky little handles. They are pleasant to fondle while waiting for the pancake to become the right shade of brown.
#15
TIL: Phossy Jaw used to be a common affliction among workers in the matchstick industry for decades which destroys the bones of the jaw. While the cause was linked to the use of white phosphorus within 5 years, it took almost a century of strikes, bans, and taxes to stop its use in the industry.
David 10 months ago
not from the White Phosphorus, but from the fumes in processing it without proper ventilation. Today matches use Red Phosphorus, which is more stable in production without the fumes issue which caused it. White Phosphorous is still used in flares, maritime distress signals, airplane emergency flares, etc. It is also the main ingredient in the creation phosphoric acid, a common food additive like in soda (and approved by FDA and EFSA), as well as in most fertilizers in the world. It is also used by over 145 militaries in the world, as contrary to popular myth, it is allowed in war, but only in 2 cases, anti-tank shells and smoke markers. WP is still highly used, just not in matches.
Forrest Hobbs 10 months ago
The first diagnosis was 1839; the first ban on white phosphorus in matches was 1872; the Berne Convention of 1906 was a step towards phasing out the industrial use of white phosphorus; China finally banned white phosphorus in matches in 1925. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phossy_jaw#Discovery. Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matchgirls%27_strike - the picture in that article shows several young women with early signs of phossy jaw.
Forrest Hobbs 10 months ago
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/Matchgirl_strikers.PNG
Load More Replies... Phred 10 months ago
See also: the Radium Girls. They were hired (circa WW1) to paint watch dials with radium paint that was bright enough for a soldier to see but too dim for the enemy to see. The girls had to point the brushes with their mouths to be able to paint the small numbers. Turns out that radium wasn't the best thing to take internally.
Riley Quinn 10 months ago
Not surprising considering scientists have been warning us about climate change for nearly that long, yet very few believe it. As long as the greedy capitalists are making a profit, why change tactics.
Jane Hower 8 months ago
Wasn't it phosphorus in watches that caused a lot of women working in the factories to get sick?
Cybele Spanjaard 9 months ago
How awful for them, all too many poisons and toxicities with mass-produced products in the past. Cheap labour was always expected, no matter the conditions or maladies the work created.
#16
TIL a Jets player who won in Super Bowl 3 lost his super bowl ring shortly after while surfing. It was found in the ocean by a lifeguard who was snorkeling 40 years later and returned to him.
Kali Chaos 10 months ago
Good on them, that's a very expensive find to return in good faith. I had the chance to hold one once, I went to uni in a big sports town. It was heavier than my watch.
Beak Hookage 10 months ago (edited)
There's a whole genre of YouTube videos about people who go diving in rivers, lakes and the ocean and retrieve things from the bottom - SO many people reunited with their (sealed in waterproof containers) phones, some of which were still switched on! And at least one possible murder victim found.
Bob Brooce 10 months ago
Related PSA: When you go swimming the water is typically cool, so rings that are normally snug can loosen. If you don't want to lose a ring (or other jewelry FTM) it's a good idea to take it off while swimming.
Upstaged75 10 months ago
Yeah my dad lost his wedding ring in the ocean one year when we were on vacation.
Load More Replies... #17
TIL in 2000 a Mexican woman performed an hour-long C-section on herself with a kitchen knife after 12 hours of constant pain. After 3 attempts to cut open her abdomen, she made a 17cm vertical incision (a typical one is 10cm & horizontal). But despite no medical training, both mom & child survived.
Alisha Natzel 10 months ago
Apparently she lived 8 hrs from medical help, had no electricity or running water and assumed after a long labor her baby was going to die. She took several shots of liquor (probably for fear and pain). Then performed the C section. Baby survived, she passed out, her other child ran for help and woman was able to sew up the incision with sewing equipment before she was transported for medical care. Read an article in the Guardian.
Dani Fogel 10 months ago
Man, the powers people can come up with at a time of need.. Astonishing.
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Panda Kicki 10 months ago
She was quite drunk. There was medical help 4 kilometers away and as soon as she allowed her son to seek help she got attened to. She couod easily called for help earlier.
Cybele Spanjaard 9 months ago (edited)
That is bravery supreme to save her baby and herself. I had an emergency C-section in 1966 by specialist doctors with a vertical incision from belly button to mid pubic area.
Nikki Gross 10 months ago (edited)
One of my Niece's has dedicated her life to working with Organizations that provide Humanitarian Relief and Aid all over the World. For the past 10 years she's been focused solely on South and Central America. I can honestly say, that girl has put more gray hairs onto my Sister's head, that it's no wonder she went completely gray by 50. Sami has dealt with Rebels, Gangs, Cartels and levels of Political and Government Corruption that you would NOT believe. We can go months without hearing from her, since she goes out to some pretty remote villages. Most of the time it's a phone call when she's in a city, or old fashioned letters with an occasional SD card. Me and my Sister, wish to God she had stayed at the orphanage in Nepal, since she was a helluva lot safer then where she is now.
#18
TIL Q Lazzarus, singer of Goodbye Horses, was unknown when the song appeared in Silence of the Lambs. Labels had rejected her due to her dreads, so she drove a cab. Once, she picked up "Lambs" director Jonathan Demme, and played him her demo. He responded "Oh my God, what is this and who are you?"
LakotaWolf (she/her) 9 months ago
It was the 1980s - some things were less culturally-accepted back then. Hilarious when you think about the general style of 80s clothing, but, here we are :(
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Vera Diblikova 9 months ago
At an Antarctic station a Russian scientist made himself appendicitis operation by looking at it in the mirror..
Rebecca McManus 9 months ago
There was an article in the Guardian about her last week, she died recently after the completion of a documentary about her. She was lead singer in a rock band but they couldn't get a recording contract because apparently women of colour didn't sing rock (🤦♀️), faded into obscurity and returned to cab driving when she had the documentary maker as a passenger and was recognised.
#19
TIL that ancient Rome had fast food restaurants called 'thermopolia,' where people bought hot meals on the go, much like modern takeout.
David 10 months ago
also most people didnt have ovens or stoves in their homes in urban areas, so many people would eat out, rather than use the public ovens and stoves.
cerinamroth 10 months ago
Like many developing countries today, such as the incredible diversity of street hawkers in places like the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand - and then developed countries start apeing it with "street food trucks".
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Oerff On Tour 10 months ago
The menu included items that are quite similar to hamburgers (on a bun) hot dogs and the precursor of the pizza
Robert Trebor 10 months ago
Mr & Mrs Cratchit likely took their anonymous gift goose down the street to a baker to have it roasted for their dinner. Their house would not have the space for such a thing.
Lorraine R 10 months ago
In Morocco, when I was there in the 70s, people didn't bake their bread at home. They would take it down the street or around the corner to the local bakery, leave it there with some coins to pay the baker's fee, and come back after an hour or so to pick it up.
Load More Replies... David 10 months ago
Junior, I can see the resemblance but if you google Roman public toilets they looked a bit different. 01-Ostia-T...ommons.jpg 
#20
TIL that in 1997 Mattel released Share a Smile Becky, a disabled Barbie doll, only to discontinue it when the wheelchair couldn't fit through the front door of the Barbie Dreamhouse.
Ron Man 10 months ago (edited)
That's not why it was discontinued. It was discontinued due to complaints from people with disabilities. Nothing about this doll would be considered PC today, and nothing about the doll actually accurately reflected disabled people. In short, it was highly offensive. Mattel has tried to make this about design issues and has claimed disabled people were all over this saying how great it is. Truth is, you can still buy this new after almost 30 years after it was discontinued because they made so many of them and nobody wanted them. $29 on Amazon https://amzn.to/4hUwM1u
glowworm2 10 months ago (edited)
Seriously, and not, I don't know, redesign the front door of the Barbie Dreamhouse or make it wheelchair accessible?
She who must not be named 10 months ago
They have, they've got a range with all different sorts of disabilities and conditions. I haven't seen them in any shops although admittedly it's been a while since I've been in a toy shop, but they're definitely available online 😊
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P1 No-Name 9 months ago
Unbelievable. How very disappointing. No thought of adjusting the Dream House?
#21
TIL that a US developer who outsourced his job to China for a fifth of his salary was repeatedly named as star employee before getting caught.
Hippopotamuses 10 months ago (edited)
But don't multi-national tech companies... you know. Oh. Actually, forget I mentioned it.
BeesEelsAndPups 10 months ago
If I recall, the issue was really that he was working on a defense contract which required a security clearance. This was a long time ago though
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Jane Jayne Jain Jeign Jein 10 months ago
The workers are not allowed to exploit the system in the way the owners can, otherwise eventually we'd all be equals!
ThatG 10 months ago
Boeing outsourced their 737 Max MCAS software development to an Indian company that paid their engineers $9/hour.
Paul Sloan 10 months ago
He did what US companies have been doing for decades.
Load More Replies... #22
TIL After his lung cancer diagnosis, actor Yul Brynner wished to warn people against smoking. After his death, the american cancer society aired an ad with the actor saying: "Now that I'm gone, I tell you: just don't smoke. If I could take back that smoking, we wouldn't be talking about any cancer."
Lowrider 56 10 months ago
I had a very scary experience with the flu and my lungs shut down. I almost died and I was a pack a day smoker. So far it's been 28 days since I had a cigarette. I hope I never smoke again.
Don Adams 10 months ago
Good for you. It does get easier. You are doing the best thing you can for yourself, and it ain't easy.. stay the course!
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Peter Bear 10 months ago
My grandfather, who served proudly and with distinction in WWII, was a long-term smoker like many of his era. He was also smart enough that when the first serious health risks became apparent, he listened, and he quit cold-turkey. He lived into his 90s and I was able to know him for 20 years of my own life, which probably wouldn't have happened if he hadn't quit.
Miss Tinker 10 months ago
You’re lucky… both of my grandfathers died before I was born due to smoking-related illnesses. My father was only 18 & my mother was 22.
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Don't listen to me 10 months ago
I stopped in 1990 after a bad dose of flu, and never went back. After ~25yrs i was at a pack a day. It can be done. I didn't make it a big fight. I kept a pack in my pocket for ~3 months & just said to myself I don't really need one today. I was told that after 10 days the nicotine is out of your system, the rest is just habit.
Pandapoo 10 months ago
1991 here. I couldn’t have kept a pack in my pocket and not smoked one. My husband was still smoking at the time, but I resisted bumming from him. Nicotine is so addictive.
Load More Replies... Riley Quinn 10 months ago (edited)
You'll hear people saying how difficult it is to quit drügs, and it certainly is, but think of how difficult it must be to quit addictions that are socially acceptable (i.e. legal), such as cigarettes, alcohol, and food. You can avoid seeing people using illicit drügs, but it's much more difficult avoiding addictions that are advertised on TV.
nottheactualphoto 10 months ago
Food is necessary for life, not so much an addiction.
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Mark Hastings 9 months ago
January of 1993 I was having chest pains. Went to a doctor and a chest x-ray was done. He found I was suffering from pnuemonia due to inhaling a foreign object. He also noted the color of my lungs due to smoking and said I was a prime candidate for lung cancer. I quit smoking on March 14, 1993. In 2 weeks I will be a non smoker for 32 years.
Lee Gilliland 10 months ago
And his wufe, who played Tipton in The King and I had to watch his death scene ever night for three years while they were on the road, poor woman.
Melinda Flick 9 months ago
It took my mother, a life long smoker of unfiltered cigarettes, being sent to the ER because she was cyanotic from undiagnosed emphysema (and living at 8000 ft elevation) before she quit smoking. It was too late, she'd been showing signs of lung impairment for decades, and it eventually killed her.
#23
TIL One of the early Spanish explorers of the American Southwest met a man who they called "the Turk", who told them stories of rich lands to the east. He would later reveal that he made it up to draw them away from Pueblo civilizations so they would die of starvation in the plains.
Forrest Hobbs 10 months ago
There's a song that covers this tale: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RwX_ZFU9ZU "Coronado & The Turk" by Steve Tilston & Maggie Boyle
Zaach 10 months ago (edited)
Al Stewart did something similar with "Road to Moscow" - such a different, sad song/story (The Soviet Union executed returning prisoners of war) EDIT: forgot the link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5atSFDWEQU
Load More Replies... Riley Quinn 10 months ago
Is it possible we could conceive a tale intriguing enough to get all the conservatives to walk aimlessly in Death Valley until they drop?
#24
TIL that when scientists transferred the gut microbiome of a schizophrenic human into mice, the mice started exhibiting schizophrenic-like behaviours.
Nikolaj Christensen 10 months ago
Luckyyyy! Mine only yell the names of the demons from Ars Gotia in reverse Latin... 🙂
Load More Replies... Riley Quinn 10 months ago
How many times have we heard people say, "it's all in your head". Looks like it's all in our gut.
Marvin Radding 9 months ago
I read an article a long time ago about a project to put the gut biome of a thin person in a fat person to see what effect that would have on health and weight. It surprised me when one of the concerns that was delaying the project was a fear that it would also change the personality of the fat person.
Patricia Steward 10 months ago
There's an interesting documentary on Netflix about this -- don't remember the exact name, but if you search for "gut" it should come up.
Patricia Steward 10 months ago
To clarify: the doc is about the gut biome, not the schizo mice. ;)
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Nikolaj Christensen 10 months ago
Kefir, Greek yoghurt, etc everything with a lot of lactic acid bacteria if I remember correctly...
Load More Replies... #25
TIL the 2022 Ignobel prize in economics went to a bunch of Mathematicians who proved, mathematically, that luck matters more than talent to achieve success.
Jaya 10 months ago
If you don't know the Ignobel prize, go check it out! It's a prize for science that makes you laugh at first, but is actually very interesting or useful. They have so many hilarious sounding studies! It is a great source of joy for me each year, there are usually a couple of studies that have me laughing out loud.
glowworm2 10 months ago (edited)
This winner from 1992 in Art got me – Presented jointly to Jim Knowlton, modern Renaissance man, for his classic anatomy poster "Penises of the Animal Kingdom," and to the U.S. National Endowment for the Arts, for encouraging Mr. Knowlton to extend his work in the form of a pop-up book.
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The Darkest Timeline 10 months ago
Hey, look; if you couldn’t manage to figure out how to come out of a wealthy persons womb, you just weren’t trying hard enough.
Load More Replies... J3447 10 months ago
But the rich always claim "hard work" was key to their success. It was their ego talking.
Oerff On Tour 10 months ago
Hard work for the employees, success for them
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The Queen Of France 10 months ago
The doctor who deliberately gave himself ear mites to understand what animals go through. Legend!
Michael Largey 10 months ago
The luck of getting rich parents plays a great role in achieving "success".
The Darkest Timeline 10 months ago
Admitting that luck and random chance play a huge role in success is, to many people, tantamount to saying you don’t know what you’re doing. It’s like admitting you have privilege; it feels like you’re saying you had no hand in your own success. And most people’s egos and worldview simply cannot handle that so they claim it was all hard work and perseverance.
Camber Hollywood 9 months ago
One thing is always more important than others for all goals. That doesn't mean it is the only thing. There are factors I can change or influence, and others I can't. I focus on those I can.
#26
TIL that a Swedish man survived in his car for 60 days, only drinking melted snow, after being snowed in with temperatures dropping as low as -30°C. However, due to the "igloo effect," the insulation from the snow helped keep him alive.
Panda Kicki 10 months ago
I remember that case.It was wild. It was volontary and he didnt want to leave the car even when found. He longs to go back. The only thing he missed was cigarretes. https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/EozXrj/snomannen-i-bilen-fick-jag-vara-i-fred
Steve H 10 months ago
The link was a fascinating read. Thanks for posting
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XenoMurph 10 months ago
Depends where you live. I live in a very temperate part of the world. |Occasionally people get stuck on a motorway for a few hours.
Load More Replies... Cybele Spanjaard 9 months ago
Wow, his snow-created vehicle igloo saved him, but no food for 60 days is debatable, he mjust have had some nourishment or his body would close down. Would the cold temps reduce his pulse, also reducing the body's need for extra calories perhaps?
#27
TIL that Great White Sharks across the Pacific Ocean consistently congregate at one specific spot in the Pacific Ocean. Scientists call this the White Shark Cafe.
Michael Largey 10 months ago
"White Shark Cafe"? A gathering of predatory sharks is usually termed a bar association.
#28
TIL - Blind people who regain sight after years struggle to recognize objects because vision is learned, not automatic. They need to train their brain to actually see.
Pamela Carter 10 months ago
I learned that in a Psych class 30+ years ago. An example was why a squirrel doesn’t see a big truck—they have no reference in their brain. Just think—a huge spaceship could be right above us and we wouldn’t see it.
BrunoVI 10 months ago
And that is the main plot device in Douglas Adams' "So Long and Thanks for the Fish," the fifth book in the "increasingly misnomered" "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy."
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Zaach 10 months ago
An early attempt to give blind people some sight was a pad on the back (with pins like the old printers) connected to cameras. It took a while but blind people were able to use it but it was too bulky and expensive. Another method for accommodating blind people was giving them one of those 'frog clickers' and teaching them echo-location
SmooshieFries 10 months ago
Heyy! My friends brother, Danny Kish, is famous for using echolocation! He can ride a bike and name everything he passes just by clicking his mouth and how the sound bounces back. Him and his brother both suffered from a rare eye cancer, Danny lost both eyes but Keith is legally blind with limited vision
Load More Replies... Becky Samuel 10 months ago
There is growing evidence to suggest that a similar issue is building among young children who are raised with noise-cancelling headphones and lots of screen time. They are failing to learn the skills needed to distinguish speech from background noise, or to filter out visual distractions.
Bob Brooce 10 months ago
Vision has both a physiological and psychological component. Exposure to light causes your eyes to send electrical impulses to your brain but your brain needs to interpret those signals. Anyone else remember seeing a film about an experiment in which somebody wore a headset that flipped his view upside down? After some period his brain adapted and turned things right side up again. When he later stopped using the headset things were upside down again until his brain learned the correction again.
Marvin Radding 9 months ago
There's a movie about a woman who gains her sight. The plot hinges on the delayed response of the brain to visual images. For instance, she enters her apartment and her brain catches the image of an intruder leaving. She doesn't understand until hours later when it wakes her up in the middle of the night.
#29
TIL that the first laws outlawing food coloring were in regards to bread. White bread was expensive and some bakers added chalk to lighten dark bread. King Edward I (1272-1307) created a law saying anyone caught using whiteners in bread would be put in the public pillory for one hour.
Hippopotamuses 10 months ago
Thank god we live in the 21st century, where food isn't adulterated, eh!
David Houde 10 months ago
I had found out recently that my grandfather, who was a vice president of a dairy and has been dead for over 20 years, ended up getting charged with adulterating food. Apparently his dairy was subcontracted to produce some juice for a national brand. They "mostly" followed the ingredients, but substituted in some cheaper ingredients. When they got caught, a bunch of the higher ups got hauled into court. They all plead guilty (to felonies I believe), but were only ordered to pay hefty fines. I think gramps had to pay $25k or so. This was back in the late 80's early 90's, so $50-60k now? So yeah, it happens, but at least the courts hit the people that do it hard in the wallet.
Load More Replies... Andrew Keir 10 months ago
I'd recommend against this - unpopular people back then sometimes used to wear suits of armour to protect themselves in pillories and even then, some died of their wounds. Being stoned to death was a definite possibility
Load More Replies... Regina Holt 10 months ago (edited)
In case anyone is wondering, Titanium dioxide is white food coloring used today.
Rick Murray 10 months ago
Titanium dioxide is banned in the EU (but not the UK). I'd be more concerned about the use of potassium bromate in American flour. Carcinogenic, but permitted by the FDA. For good reason it is banned in numerous other places.
Load More Replies... Riley Quinn 10 months ago
I remember my parents telling us how they used color tablets of yellow dye to add to their greyish-white margarine to make it look like yellow butter. Fortunately, we have food manufacturers that color our yum-yum-yummy foods today./s
Elisabeth Morrissey 9 months ago
And when farm wives churned their own butter, they would simmer a grated carrot in milk and add the milk to their winter cream to dye the butter yellow.
Load More Replies... #30
TIL Linda Chase left her roommate's dead body in the recliner chair where he died for 18 months. She talked to him and watched NASCAR on TV with him. After police performed a welfare check and found the body, Linda's only explanation was that she didn't want to be alone.
Mrs. Kay 10 months ago
So true. I found my brother’s body after about three weeks and the smell will likely never leave that place or my memory.
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boredhousekitty 10 months ago
There's a similar case in my country, the case of the Kalideres family. A family of four were found dead of natural causes, but the investigation found that two of them had been dead for months, suggesting the remaining two had lived with the dead bodies before eventually succumbing to death themselves. The family had isolated themselves for years. It's heartbreaking.
Beth Wheeler 10 months ago
Sick, I don't know how she could live with the smell after his bladder and bowels released and then the decaying body.
Andrew Keir 10 months ago
try to be kind, particularly when you don't know all the context
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#31
TIL the British Library must store one copy of every single book published in the UK and Ireland. It houses over 200,000,000 publications, adds 6 miles (9.65 km) of new shelf space a year, and receives over 8000 new publications daily.
StPaul9 10 months ago
That's called a reference library. Every single country has one. Every state in Australia has one. If a book is published, it gets a copy. Hurry now before the Orange Fascist shuts yours down.
BrunoVI 10 months ago
The American Library of Congress holds only 20% of US-published books, which is 38 million. The British library holds only 14 million books, but maybe that's a more complete collection because the UK is so much smaller. OP isn't so wrong in its count, though: most of the gap between 14 million and 200 million is in publications, including electronic, which are not books.
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Janissary35680 10 months ago
That's because it's a depository library: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depository_library
Edda Kamphues 10 months ago
Oops, I seem to be stored in a few libraries across the world. My apologies.
Beak Hookage 10 months ago
If you publish a book in Australia it has to be registered to the National Library, though I don't recall if they hold physical copies of *everything*
Mary Kelly 10 months ago
many copyright offices are located in the country's main library..it was in the way mmany countries built up the office...want to register the copyright for your book?...send us a copy..
#32
TIL South Park aired an episode titled “Band in China”… which resulted in them being banned in China.
#33
TIL huge rogue waves were dismissed as a scientifically implausible sailors' myth by scientists until one 84ft wave hit an oil platform. The phenomenon has since been proven mathematically and simulated in a lab, also proving the existence of rogue holes in the ocean.
Zaach 10 months ago
First discovered here "The soliton phenomenon was first described in 1834 by John Scott Russell who observed a solitary wave in the Union Canal in Scotland" he followed the rogue wave for hours. Story here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soliton
Ace 10 months ago
Very interesting, but that is describing a completely different phenomenon.The rogue wave is formed from multiple mergings of other waves, the 'Soliton' by definition does not merge with other waves.
Load More Replies... Riley Quinn 10 months ago
Humans tend to embellish their experiences, so I understand the doubt among the scientists. But when people in various locations all tell a similar story, it's time to check it out. It's estimated that 3 in every 10,000 waves are rogue waves. Within a two decade period, more than 200 supertankers and container ships over 656ft (200m) in length were sunk. Now imagine wooden ships facing these 85ft waves.
Major Harris 10 months ago
11 dec 1942, the famous liner, s.s. queen mary was overly loaded with 10,340 soldiers and 950 crew and was 700 miles from scotland when she was hit broadside by a wave that estimated to be 92 feet high. this caused the massive ship to heel over 52 degrees, almost completely on her side. if she had gone three more degrees, she would have become the worst maritime disaster in history
Bob Brooce 10 months ago
Rogue wave is probably still a misnomer. Most waves are somewhat similar in size and waves then to follow pattern, but it's entirely normal for some waves the fall outside the pattern and be larger or smaller. At the very least, people too often refer to a wave as a rogue simply because hey failed to anticipate a larger one.
#34
TIL the modern Oval Office was only created in 1934, and designed so that President Franklin D Roosevelt, who used a wheelchair, could move easily between the Office and the Residence.
The Darkest Timeline 10 months ago
Sadly, had anyone known he was in that condition, they might not have voted for him
Load More Replies... Nikolaj Christensen 10 months ago (edited)
F*****K! DONT TELL DONALD DUMPSTER FIRE! HE WILL TEAR IT DOWN! THAT MAN HATES INCLUSIVITY!!!
M T Sharp 10 months ago
The oval office was built for Teddy Roosevelt and one must go outside to go from the west wing to the residence.
Tropical Tarot 10 months ago (edited)
I think it might be to give a transition between leaving the office and going home for somebody who literally lives in the building they work in. Since this was all before remote work.
Load More Replies... #35
TIL in 1940, when Paramount asked Fleischer Studios to created a Superman cartoon, Fleischer thought it would be too hard to make. In an attempt to avoid making the cartoon, they quoted four times the cost of an average cartoon for the budget ($100k). To their shock, Paramount agreed to the budget.
Data1001 10 months ago
Those Max Fleischer Superman cartoons still look amazing to this day. Money well spent!
Beak Hookage 10 months ago (edited)
It was also them who gave Superman the ability to fly! In the comics he could only "leap tall buildings in a single bound", but in animation that just looked silly so they asked "can we just have him fly?" and eventually that became comic book canon. Meanwhile the Superman radio show brought kryptonite to the table (because the voice actor wanted to go on holiday).
BrownEyedPanda 10 months ago
Bud Collyer, who also did the Superman radio serials and the 1967 Saturday morning cartoon.
Load More Replies... #36
TIL in 2013 a woman went to pick up a friend in Brussels (less than 90 miles from her home), however because of a GPS error, she ended up in Croatia after driving 900 miles across five international borders. She realized she took a wrong turn two days after leaving. Her son had reported her missing.
David 10 months ago
I can believe she may have driven that far but I don't believe she was ignorant of it unless she has mental issues. Nobody starts a roughly 1.5 to 2 hour drive and drives for two days before figuring out there is a problem with their directions. It "smells" more like the kind of thing someone would use as an excuse/cover to explain away a road trip.
Bob Brooce 10 months ago
You don't have to be stupid to be clueless about map reading or how far away something is. Europeans commonly come to the US thinking things along the lines of taking a side trip to [someplace hundreds or thousands of miles away] during a short visit to their primary destination. IIRC, this woman was supposed to be picking her friend up at train station, so presumably the problem was far more than a failure to know how far/long it was to the train station.
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Oerff On Tour 10 months ago
Something like that happend way before GPS, but when Google maps existed. So this man from France printed his directions and started off. At the end of the day he arrived, and asked where the railway station was. The locals looked at him with amazement, and told him Zurich didn't have a station, he would have to go to Harlingen. The man then realized that he was in Zurich, not Zürich. The north of the Netherlands, instead of Switzerland. 877km/545mi ,8.5h away
Snazzy Smurf 10 months ago (edited)
Meanwhile...800 miles later. 1.5 hours or 1.5 days, same difference. She is probably someone who shouldn't drive extended distances alone.
Jane Jayne Jain Jeign Jein 10 months ago
She is probably someone who shouldn't be left alone, period!
Load More Replies... Pamela Carter 10 months ago
I lost the signal on my GPS and then it came back on. I followed it and realized it was sending me in a big circle when I recognized a bridge under construction. I pulled over to check; it was sending me to my son’s old address. I lost about 2 hours but finally got home. Decided if I do it again I’m going back to his (new) l ppl house or stopping at a hotel.
Verena 10 months ago
That was discussed extensively last week. It is a b******t story. Nobody can be that "distracted" to not notice crossing 5 borders (some with passport check), dealing with 4 different languages and 5 types of traffic signs, topping up gas which is named differently and a lot more indicators.
Johanna De Swart 9 months ago
Exactly, i get lost on the way down a slide but this is even impossible for me.
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Kerry Palmer 9 months ago
My mom went to visit a friend who lived about 5 miles away. When we finally found her she was 3 states away. That's when we knew we had to take her keys away.
Jane Jayne Jain Jeign Jein 10 months ago
"... because of a GPS error ..." This! This is why the machines will eventually rise up and decide it's best for the planet if they just wipe us out!
Scott Rackley 10 months ago
"Why am I going south for 5 hours?" Should have clicked in at some time.
KazzaHazza 10 months ago
900 miles, 5 borders so we can assume 5 different currencies and she didn’t have to fill her tank once and not have to pay in her native currency? 🤨
Jane Jayne Jain Jeign Jein 10 months ago
Check out how many countries in Europe use the Euro. Plus, if she paid by card she wouldn't have noticed. Heck, she didn't notice much of anything on this journey. She didn't even notice day turning to night turning to day!
Load More Replies... #37
TIL there were just 5 surviving longbows from medieval England known to exist before 137 whole longbows (and 3,500 arrows) were recovered from the wreck of the Mary Rose in 1980 (a ship of Henry VIII's navy that capsized in 1545). The bows were in excellent finished condition & have been preserved.
Hippopotamuses 10 months ago
They were clearly pretty good with longbows. Ships... not so much.
Apatheist Account2 10 months ago
Britain's empire was largely due to its naval power. We got the hang of ships pretty quickly.
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#38
TIL F1 driver Kimi Raikkonen nearly bankrupted the Lotus team by being too good. His contract said that he would be awarded €50,000 for every championship point scored. Lotus thought their car would be so uncompetitive that year that it would not be a problem. Kimi went on to score 207 points.
Anonymous Fox 10 months ago
The balls that man has are insane. I remember that there was once fog on the track, and while other drivers were slowing down, Kimi accelerated.
KazzaHazza 10 months ago
Remember when he got lost on track? I think it was Brazil. Went up a service road, the radio is hilarious.
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#39
TIL that some people are genetically gifted in that they can sleep for as little as 4 hours without suffering from daytime sleepiness or other consequences of sleep deprivation.
Zoe Donaghy 10 months ago
Due to an undiagnosed lactose intolerance, reflux and silent reflux my son could only drink a few ounces at a time as a newborn. Anything more and he'd be in pain for hours screaming or projectile vomit. Because of this he was up every 2 hours for feeding until he was 4 months old and I introduced lactase enzyme. After that he started sleeping in longer stretches until he started teething at 5 months old. Every tooth came in one after the other and by 12 months he had all his teeth bar his 2yr molars. My sleep has never went back to normal and he's 2 now. I average between 4 and 6 hours a night.
Orange Mum 10 months ago
My son, born with cystic fibrosis, was the same, he had to be fed every three hours around the clock, he was a slow feeder and a bottle would take over thirty minutes, this gave me an even smaller window of sleep. For one year this was done by only myself. I can now stay up for up to 48 hours with no problem. My son is 27 now and my sleep pattern, whilst good can be non existent if required
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usernameorwhatever 10 months ago
I sleep around four hours a night with no issue. I can go 24 hours straight without sleeping and just feel a little tired, but that's about it. The only real problem is when I don't sleep for 2-3 days at a time, that's only happened a handful of times, but the sleep deprivation from that is horrible and terrifying. My only real explanation for this is that I naturally feel more awake at night than the day. If I could sleep during the day, I'd definitely sleep longer. It's just impossible for me to go to sleep before 2 in the morning, and I have to get up at 6 every day :/
Gracie Jay 10 months ago
Me too! I crash at 72 hours no sleep I wouldn’t say this being able to sleep 4 hrs a night without consequence is “genetically gifted”.
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Billo66 10 months ago
Waking up every day at 3am is a Genetic "gift"? I go to bed at 6 or I go to bed at 11, doesn't matter. 3am, eyes pop open, in the dark I know exactly what time it is. I have decided that must be when the aliens put me back in bed lol
Michelle C 10 months ago
They have a lot of other long-term consequences, though, such as earlier death.
UKGrandad 10 months ago
Not necessarily. Both Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher famously slept for no more than 4 hours. They died aged 90 and 89 respectively - and Churchill was also a very heavy drinker all his life.
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HighNMightyBigshotBossOfWorld 9 months ago
That’s me,! I go to sleep and wake up 4 hours later. If I wake up at 2 am I know I fell asleep at 10. No alarm clock needed. No naps, I CANNOT imagine sleeping longer and consider myself lucky. Now, I’m genetically blessed, I like that!
Tropical Tarot 10 months ago
I'm usually in bed by about 1:00 a.m.. my wife comes home for lunch at 2:00 a.m. and then I usually sleep till she gets home at 7:00 a.m. she leaves her second job and then comes home at noon and then she sleeps until 7:00 p.m. when we get up and have dinner and spend a couple hours together. And she leaves overnight job at 10:00 starting it all over again. I don't get much sleep in a row usually 2 hours here 3 hours there I probably get about 7:00 on a good day.
#40
TIL the reason that purple has traditionally been associated with royalty was because, in Ancient Rome, the only source of purple was milking and fermenting the liquid from a snail. It took 12,000 snails to produce 1 gram of dye! This made the Caesars declare it their exclusive color.
Forrest Hobbs 10 months ago
I read that "milking" works, but gathering the snails and crushing them apparently yielded more dye. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrian_purple#Production_from_sea_snails
AnnaB 10 months ago
Well, it's hard to find someone with small enough hands to do the milking.
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Mary Kelly 10 months ago
no, not rome...it was a trade secret from ancient phoenecia (now lebanon)...only the very rich could afford it...that is why it was a favorite of wealthy romans....but they didn't develop the color....
Nancy Parker 9 months ago
That particular purple, that is. They could have simply double dyed with woad and madder, the commonest dyestuffs in Europe.
Riley Quinn 10 months ago
Tyrian purple, ultramarine blue, and scarlet were the most expensive dyes and reserved for royalty in many countries. Tyrian purple made from murex snails remains grossly expensive at thousands of dollars for 1 gram, however much less expensive synthetic Tyrian purple is made today.
#41
TIL that a KGB agent and a CIA agent became friends while trying to recruit each other; they knew the other was a spy and just didn’t talk about it.
LinkTheHylian 10 months ago
CIA: "Hey, wanna come watch the football with me?" KGB: "In Soviet Russia football kicks you!" CIA: "That wasn't funny the first 49 times..."
JoMeBee 10 months ago
No, it was made into. Looney Tunes episode! Look up Sam and Ralph!
Load More Replies... #42
TIL in 2020 a woman took an online DNA test which showed a 22% match with a man who she'd eventually discover to be her still alive uncle, who was kidnapped in 1951 at the age of six & had been missing for 70 years. After he was abducted in Oakland, he was flown to the east coast & raised there.
Michelle C 10 months ago
I wonder what the reunion must’ve been like – I’m sure it had to have been better than what was portrayed in the news media!
Bec 10 months ago
More details, he didn't care to speak to the media https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/09/23/luis-armando-albino-abducted-oakland-park-found-east-coast/75344663007/
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Tropical Tarot 10 months ago
I think that means she got her results online. You can get them mailed to you or you can get them online. My wife found her sister this way. They were both adopted.
Load More Replies... #43
TIL Brian Acton was rejected by Facebook for a job in 2009. And that same year, he & Jan Koum "took a chance" and co-founded WhatsApp together. Then in 2014 after amassing 450 million global users, they sold WhatsApp to Facebook in a deal that reportedly made both of them a multi-billionaire.
Panda Panda Bo Banda 10 months ago
I was also turned down by Facebook. Where's my billion??? 😁
BeesEelsAndPups 10 months ago
I got recruited by Facebook. But they hated that I didn't have a Facebook account myself. I was having a hard time thinking about whether I was comfortable working for them. So I wasn't heartbroken at not getting the job.
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#44
TIL There was a Portuguese woman in early 18th century who disguised herself as a man and joined the army, fought in India and became captain of a fortress. She was found out when she asked the king for permission to marry a colleague.
Ron Man 10 months ago
No name BP? Seriously? Her name was Maria Ursula d'Abreu e Lencastro and she joined the Navy as Balthazar do Conto Cardoso
Clown fish 10 months ago
These are posts from Reddit this is just what the person on Reddit wrote BP just copied it.
Load More Replies... Beak Hookage 10 months ago
"You wish to marry another man?! Have you taken leave of your senses, my good sir?" "Uh, about that..."
#45
TIL in 2010 Sam Ballard was drinking with several friends when he was dared to eat a slug that had begun to crawl across his friend's concrete patio. After he ate it, he'd find out the infected slug had given him rat lungworm disease, which put him into a year-long coma & ultimately took his life.
MargyB 10 months ago
I thought about the above fact yesterday when I read about the boy who just died from trying to inject a butterfly! What the actual f&$K!
Spocks's Mom 10 months ago
I had to look this up because I thought you accidentally used the word "inject" instead of "ingest". I chalked it up to your text predictor misbehaving until I saw he actually took a syringe and injected a butterfly into his leg. 😪
Load More Replies... Michelle C 10 months ago
I remember hearing about this and asking myself how some people could be so ridiculous. What a heartbreaking way to end a life.
Marsha Hultberg 9 months ago
Alcohol... It's called "Devil's Soup' in Trinidad & Tobago. Little good comes from imbibin, ever. Aside from feeling warm and fuzzy initially. SMH
#46
TIL Tasmanian Devil's give birth to between 30 and 40 offsprings but the mother only has four teats. The first four to attach to teats survive, the others perish.
Auntriarch 10 months ago
Seems extraordinarily wasteful surely, even a marsupial baby takes some resources to make. Unless she eats the laggers
Helen Rohrlach 10 months ago
Let's stick to only one gruesome fact at a time.
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Marsha Hultberg 9 months ago
Come on nature... Pick up the pace. You're far more responsible than that! 😉
#47
TIL Marcus Licinius Crassus, often called "the richest man in Rome," formed the first fire brigade, saving burning buildings only if owners sold at a low price. Otherwise, he let them burn. The buildings would then be leased back to the former owners.
Joe Bloe 10 months ago
It make his death by parthian pouring melted gold in his mouth even more ironic!!
Mary Grant 10 months ago
The original slum lord millionaire. Sell me your house or watch it burn and after that you can rent it from me until I say so or die
BrownEyedPanda 10 months ago
His friends must have called him "Crass" for short. He sure lived up to his name. 🫤
Riley Quinn 10 months ago
Without a DNA test, I can't prove anything, but I think old Marcus is Elon's ancestor.
#48
TIL a student wore the same pair of jeans 330 times over 15 months without washing them, then after washing them, wore them another 13 days. A textile scientist had tested the jeans for bacteria both after the 15 months (pre-wash) & after the 13 days. Little difference in bacterial count was found.
Andrew Keir 10 months ago
"Cleaning is a waste of time, because after the first few years, the dust doesn't get worse" - Quentin Crisp
Jan Peters 10 months ago
Well, after 13 days, you probably have saturated the bacteria count ... it no longer increases!
Cydney Golden 9 months ago
The less you wash your jeans the best. Speaking as a jeans wearer since 1965.
Kerry Palmer 9 months ago
A student in one of the classes I taught (university level) I swear did that. You did not want to stand down-wind from him.
#49
TIL the "Elephant's Foot" mass of radioactive material beneath the Chernobyl disaster was so dense that they needed to use armor-piercing rounds fired from an AK-47 rifle to break off samples.
Paul Donahue 10 months ago
They also could only take pictures remotely with mirrors around corners because the radiation would destroy the film.
David Houde 10 months ago
It's the melted mass below the reactor from the Chernobyl meltdown. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant%27s_Foot_(Chernobyl)
Load More Replies... Riley Quinn 10 months ago
This past Feb 14th, a Russian drone struck the protective shield putting a 6m hole in it, that also damaged equipment and electric cables.
TotallyNOTAFox 10 months ago
Well yeah, uranium is one of the most dense materials known to us
Andrew Keir 10 months ago
That explains the colour of a certain politician's head, I suppose ... Uranium is orange, correct?
Load More Replies... #50
TIL Jefferson Davis attempted to patent a steam-operated propeller invented by his slave, Ben Montgomery. Davis was denied because he was not the "true inventor." As President of the Confederacy, Davis signed a law that permitted the owner to apply to patent the invention of a slave.
Hidalgo 10 months ago
He also wanted to establish a slave empire all the way down to Tierra del Fuego
Michael Largey 10 months ago
Davis's Union opponent, Abraham Lincoln, is the only president to be granted a patent. It also involved ships, being a device to lift river vessels off of sandbars.
Zaach 10 months ago
Africa skipped the bronze age - they went from stone age to iron age about 2000 years before Europe. A British 'inventor??' found a forge in Jamaica that produced excellent steel; he had the forge destroyed and took the secret with him to the UK and patented it.
Forrest Hobbs 10 months ago
"Black metal-workers in Jamaica pioneered key industrial revolution innovation" https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2023/jul/black-metal-workers-jamaica-pioneered-key-industrial-revolution-innovation. "The innovation, widely known as the “Cort process” after the English financier-turned-ironmaster who took credit for it, enabled scrap and poor-quality iron to be converted into wrought iron on an industrial scale."
Load More Replies... Andrew Keir 10 months ago
Thomas Edison just hired engineers to do the inventing for him, then patented their ideas. Same M O though
Forrest Hobbs 10 months ago
Thomas Edison's most important invention was arguably the modern research lab. He didn't just hire people to come up with inventions, he hired *lots* of people do to so, tried to make sure they had "the right stuff", provided the facilities they needed to do their work, and managed the whole setup so it was economically productive (and exploited them horribly, but hey, I never said Edison was a *nice* guy...). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Edison#Research_and_development_facility
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#51
TIL that Samuel L. Jackson planned to become a marine biologist before becoming an actor. He is currently the highest-grossing actor of all time.
#52
TIL Only 47 people live on the Pitcairn Islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Almost all of the residents are descendants of the mutineers of HMS Bounty, a British ship in 1790.
Panda Kicki 10 months ago
Wasnt that the one currently in the news for investigations of generations of traditional rapes of the young girls?
Bi.Felicia 10 months ago
So I ended up in a bit of a deep dive and now I want to go visit Pitcairn Island. It has officially been added to my bucket list.
Miss Tinker 10 months ago
Unfortunately, the island has a terrible history of incest & rape 😢
Load More Replies... #53
TIL that donations of used clothes are NEVER needed during disaster relief according to FEMA.
Ron Man 10 months ago
There's a good reason for this. There are many items FEMA won't accept as used, clothing is one of them. People flood donations with s****y, old and unusable items and FEMA doesn't have time to deal with that when there's an emergency. So they just don't accept anything they can't hand out. People have tried donating garbage bags of old clothing and household goods that were damaged and dirty.
JoMeBee 10 months ago
Did not know this and it makes sense. However there are plenty of nonprofits that respond to disasters that accept clothing. (Not being cantankerous, just don't want to discourage people from donating and having more stuff go into a landfill)
Load More Replies... Panda Kicki 10 months ago
Yes. Tons and tons of rotten clothing at the taunami areas took valuable resources to be brought away so real help could arrive.
Zena 10 months ago
FEMA says so. https://www.fema.gov/disaster/recover/volunteer-donate
Load More Replies... #54
TIL that “court jesters” were often used to give bad news to the monarch that no one else would dare deliver. When the French fleet was destroyed at the Battle of Sluys, Phillip VI’s jester told him that the English sailors “don’t even have the guts to jump into the water like our brave French”.
#55
TIL the first known instance of a storm chaser or meteorologist k**led by a tornado occurred in 2013 when Tim Samaras, his son Paul, & Carl Young were killed near El Reno, OK by the widest tornado ever recorded. It expanded from 1 mile to 2.6 miles wide in about 30 seconds as it closed in on them.
Bi.Felicia 10 months ago
Holy cannoli, that's crazy how quickly and how much the tornado expanded. RIP to the 3 storm chasers.
Andrew Keir 10 months ago
Interesting to see BP missing the chance to c*ns*r a word in the third line - or was the first line self-c*ns*ring ?
Multa Nocte 10 months ago
Oh dear - you pointed it out! Now I can never unsee it! I am traumatised I tell you, traumatised!
Load More Replies... #56
TIL Thomas Edison's son, Thomas Edison Jr was an aspiring inventor, but lacking his father's talents, he became a snake oil salesman who advertised his scam products as "the latest Edison discovery". His dad took him to court, and Jr agreed to stop using the Edison name in exchange for a weekly fee.
Norm Gilmore 10 months ago
Thomas Edison Senior wasn't a Saint either. Along with xkcd The Oatmeal is also one of my favourite cartoonists. https://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla
#57
TIL: The "Simple Sabotage Field Manual" was declassified in 2008 and it contains advice on how spies can sabotage the enemy by just being maliciously incompetent. Advice include praising inefficient coworkers, cry and sob frequently at work, asking inane questions in meetings, and spreading gossip.
Matthew Savestheworld 10 months ago
It has become newly popular. Apparently it is being recommended and passed around to federal employees in the Trump administration
#58
TIL that due to an agreement between the National Archives and Caroline Kennedy, the jacket Jackie Kennedy wore on the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated cannot be displayed in public until 2103.
Data1001 10 months ago
Probably as a sign of respect to Kennedy family members who were alive at the time of the assassination, because the jacket is blood-spattered.
Bi.Felicia 10 months ago
I copied some snippets from a People magazine article.- Today, the suit is kept at the National Archives and Records Administration's College Park facility, where it is held in a custom-made, acid-free box with temperature and humidity control. Although it had been at the National Archives since 1964, it still legally belonged to Jackie's daughter and surviving heir, Caroline Kennedy, until 2003, when a deed of gift was secured from Caroline — though it came with some stipulations. Per Caroline's request, the suit won’t be available for viewing until at least the year 2103, when, according to the National Archives, the Kennedy family will reconsider whether there will ever be any sort of public access. "The family further desires to ensure that the materials never be subject to public display, research, or any other use that would in any way dishonor the memory of Mrs. Kennedy or President Kennedy, or cause any grief or suffering to members of their family," Caroline's request read.
Bi.Felicia 10 months ago
Continued- In addition to Jackie's pink suit, her shoes, handbag and stockings, which were reportedly "blood-covered and folded in a towel," per The New York Times, are also preserved at the National Archives. The whereabouts of her famous white gloves and pink pillow box hat, however, are unknown. "The hat apparently goes to the Secret Service initially and the Secret Service turns it over to Mrs. Kennedy's private secretary, and then it disappears. It has not been seen since," A Cruel and Shocking act author Philip Shenon told CNN in 2013. Two years earlier, however, the Los Angeles Times posed a different theory, stating that the hat was last seen with her personal secretary, Mary Gallagher. In her 1969 memoir My Life with Jacqueline Kennedy, Gallagher confirmed she had been in possession of the hat at some point while in the hospital with Jackie. “While standing there I was handed Jackie’s pillbox hat and couldn’t help noticing the strands of her hair beneath the hat pin.
Load More Replies... Bi.Felicia 10 months ago
Hmm, I wonder what the reasoning behind this is? Off to do some research. I'll update if I find anything interesting.
superfluous 10 months ago
I wasn't born when he was killed and I have no interest in seeing the dress displayed. I find it macabre they display the chair Lincoln was shot in (which has bloodstains - and probably brains - on it).
#59
TIL of safety razor slots. In the 1930s-50s some home bathrooms had slots built into their walls where people would insert used razor blades. Future renovations have found walls packed with hundreds of blades.
Bi.Felicia 10 months ago
About 3 years ago, I lived in a double-bed motel room that was converted into little studio apartments. The bathrooms all had the razor blade slots built into the walls. That was my first and, so far, only time seeing them IRL.
Beak Hookage 10 months ago
There's an obscure adventure game called Bad Mojo in which you are trapped as a cockroach (yes really) and one puzzle involves climbing inside one of those slots and pushing a razor over the edge to put paid to a big rat who won't quit trying to eat you alive.
Matthew Savestheworld 10 months ago
I had this in a home and in my college dorm room. Both older buildings
#60
TIL: There was obesity in the Middle Ages, but the rich were expected to restrain themselves as fat people can't become knights. However, Sancho I was a morbidly obese king who weighed 240 kg and couldn't wield a sword, bed his wife, or walk. He was eventually expelled as he was too obese to rule.
Peeka_Mimi 10 months ago
I vote that the Orange Putrescence is too obese to rule. All in favor say, "aye."
Zaach 10 months ago
Remember, there was not much else to do except eat after dark back in those days
Richard Graham 10 months ago (edited)
I can think of something else to do after dark, no matter what era.
Load More Replies... #61
TIL the T4 Program was a N*zi German euthanasia program that forcibly k**led the physically or mentally disabled, the emotionally distraught, elderly people and the incurably ill. The death toll may have reached 200,000 or more.
SmooshieFries 10 months ago
Scary stuff. I have to admit, I do keep my head in the sand. Its all too much
Load More Replies... wowbagger 10 months ago
If Trump goes after HIPAA (medical privacy laws), that would be a warning sign that this is on its way.
B W 10 months ago
We disabled people know it all starts with eliminating us first.
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#62
TIL of hyperforeignism, which is when people mispronounce foreign words that are actually simpler than they assume. Examples include habanero, coup de grâce, and Beijing.
Ace 10 months ago
TIL that the N in habanero is not pronounced like the ñ in jalapeño. Guilty as charged.
Auntriarch 10 months ago
Me too. I still don't know how to pronounce Pedro Ximenez though.
Load More Replies... Lady Eowyn 10 months ago
Around here - Maryland near D.C. - we've got Grosvenor. As in Grov-nor. Or, as the Metro drivers often day, Gros-ven-or.
BeesEelsAndPups 10 months ago
I like to believe I started that trend. I started calling all the metro stops by how they'd be pronounced by the elves in LOTR. Gross-Venn-Urh was my favorite. Also "Ross Ilyian" for Rosslyn. I am a dork
Load More Replies... Hippopotamuses 10 months ago
Mt favourite is fillet. Pretty much universally pronounced as fill-it where I live. With the notable exception of McDonalds, where it is called a fill-ay.
Beth H 10 months ago
In Texas we have a lot of town names that are tough if you’ve never heard a local say it, Joachim, Hokium, Mexia, Humble
Load More Replies... BrunoVI 10 months ago
How are people mispronouncing these words? Adding "y" to "habanero" to sound like "habanyero"? I can't for the life of me think how "coo de grahss" should be simpler... unless all but utterly obliterating the vowel in "de" as the French often do ("cood' grahss").... but that doesn't fit a false assumption based on the foreignness of the word.
Helen Rohrlach 10 months ago
Belarus tractors pronounced bell-lar-rus instead of bell-are-rus because nobody knew how to say it's in the 80's when they were sent to Australia to pay for wool .
#63
TIL after Leona Helmsley did not pay her contractors that worked on her Connecticut home, she was investigated for tax evasion, and she received a 16 year sentence. During trial her housekeeper testified that Helmsley said "only the little people pay taxes." She ended up serving 19 months in prison.
David 10 months ago
Apparently only little people serve anything close to their actual prison sentences. /S
BrunoVI 10 months ago
OP was just plain wrong. She was sentenced to four years, and served 21 months. Her reduced sentence was due to heart problems. U.S. prisoners typically serve an average of less that half of their sentence, if they do not get into further legal trouble in prison (which is often hard to avoid). (30 months served compared to 62 months sentenced) https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/tssp.pdf They used to be even shorter on average; the ubiquitousness of shortened sentences is a key reason why laws have been passed to mandate minimums.
Load More Replies... SmooshieFries 10 months ago
I wish this would happen to other bazillionaires who think such laws are beneath them
Michelle C 10 months ago
At Least she did serve some time And I hope she learned from her ignorance and malice
#64
TIL - During the California gold rush of 1849, eggs were $3 each, not adjusted for inflation.
Ron Man 10 months ago (edited)
This was in the actual area of the gold rush, not nationwide. There was so much gold at the time that goods and services skyrocketed. And no, this wasn't even everywhere in that region. And no, this wasn't for raw eggs either. This was at hotels and restaurants that the newly rich would live in.
usernameorwhatever 10 months ago
According to an inflation calculator online, it would be equivalent to $654.63 today. Of course, that could be wrong, because it is an online inflation calculator, and this is the only one that lets me go further in the past from 1913.
Load More Replies... Nice Beast Ludo 10 months ago
These need more clarity. Do we mean actual chicken eggs? $3 each in 2025 time or $3 in 1849? Because that seems absolutely ridiculous either way- $3 per egg. A lot of these need a lot more information. Why do we get paragraphs and paragraphs of really stupid stories but something supposedly factual and interesting is a one sentence cliff hanger??
Zena 10 months ago
Other than not specifying chicken eggs, which one might assume from context (or, perhaps it does also include other commonly-consumed eggs such as duck eggs), there's nothing unclear in this post. As someone else pointed out, it says "not adjusted for inflation." What else is unclear? Where's the cliffhanger?
Load More Replies... #65
TIL all of the 500 fastest supercomputers in the world run on Linux.
Toothless Feline 10 months ago
Quantum computers do not fall under the conventional definition of “supercomputers”. They’re a different kind of computer altogether.
Load More Replies... TotallyNOTAFox 10 months ago
Makes sense, Linux offers easier adaptivity to specialized tasks than Windows - Most militiaries and research organisations use it for that reason as well
#66
TIL that in utero, a third artery temporarily runs down the arm to help with the development of the hand. By 8 weeks after birth, this artery usually disappears. For unknown reasons, people are retaining this artery as adults, and it's now three times as prevalent as it was 100 years ago.
Lyone Fein 10 months ago
Some evolutionary hiccup that favors the development of typing skills?
Andrew Keir 10 months ago
I severely doubt that people need an artery to be able to type. Nerves & muscles, yes; but the hand is already well supplied with blood, so doesn't need a further supply.
Load More Replies... #67
TIL that before 1979, you could use the hippie trail to go from Western Europe to India without flying.
Hippopotamuses 10 months ago (edited)
Oh, you'd be flying towards the end. Don't worry about that!
TotallyNOTAFox 10 months ago (edited)
You can still do that today technically, if it's a smart idea is another story though....
#68
TIL that since the year 1960, London has only experienced six White Christmases.
Zaach 10 months ago
There was a mini-ice age when the Themes froze over and circuses were set up on the ice
Huddo's sister 10 months ago
QI taught me that they are far more likely (statistically) to have a white Easter than Christmas. Australia has had a couple of white Christmases (in certain places, Victoria, Tasmania etc) in summer but this year we are very unlikely to have a white Christmas even in Victoria and Tasmania. I have a feeling it will be like 2006 where Victoria barely had a snow season at all on it's mountains.
Apatheist Account2 10 months ago
There were more in the time of Dickens' youth, which is why his novels, most noticeably A Christmas Carol, tend to have them. These days they tend to occur less than once every 10 years.
Dee Rutherford 10 months ago
Well both USA and Canada have experienced “White” whatever this year…
#69
TIL that there are more ethnic Norwegians living in USA than in Norway.
Nice Beast Ludo 10 months ago
I got "ethnic" confused with "ethical" and just stared at the wall in confusion for 30 seconds
Meowzers! 10 months ago
This statement is false; while there is a large population of Norwegian Americans, significantly more ethnic Norwegians live in Norway than in the United States. According to the 2021 U.S. census, there are over 4.5 million people claiming Norwegian ancestry in the U.S., which is still less than the total population of Norway. Doing an ancestry dna test and it coming back 3% Norwegian doesn't make you Norwegian.
Ace 10 months ago (edited)
Worth noting that US Census question is self-reported and can include multiple ethnicities, or none at all 10522-Appe...gure-2.png 
cerinamroth 10 months ago
Are you American? Strangely, I have a feeling only Americans would say this.
Load More Replies... #70
TIL in 2011 twenty-two "fake" Apple Stores were discovered in China; at least one of which actually sold real Apple products while the employees there had no idea they didn't really work in retail for Apple.
Jaya 10 months ago
To bar fair, I have never checked whether any of the stores I've worked at were actually officially connected to their chain, did any of you?
Andrew Keir 10 months ago
How would one go about checking this? Who could you ask, but rely on an honest answer?
Load More Replies... #71
TIL when it gets cold enough, daddy long legs will huddle together in the thousands to create warmth.
Data1001 10 months ago
Even scarier when they are startled and scatter in all directions.
Load More Replies... David 10 months ago
I wouldn't say they were "huddled" but I once found many hundreds of them (probably thousands) on the roof of a small cave. Friend and me exploring when camping. Low roof cave, had to bend over just a tiny bit. Maybe the size of a living room except for the height. Happened to touch the ceiling and it felt weird / 'fuzzy'. Shine light up and we see all the spiders. We left. We didn't fear them but still didn't want them crawling all over us
#72
TIL Siblings can get completely different results (e.g., one 30% Irish and another 50% Irish) from DNA ancestry tests, even though they share the same parents, due to genetic recombination.
Max Fox 10 months ago (edited)
Sigh. None of the BP writers know how to explain anything, and BP doesn't seem to have any editors on staff. First, unless they are identical twins, they will always get different results. Second, the way that ethnicity/geographic origins are calculated means that they can change between two tests of the same person. But year, each inherits 50% of the DNA of each parent, but it's not the same 50%.
Ace 10 months ago
BP "Writers" have nothing to do with the content of these posts, they just copy and paste them wholesale from Reddit, complete and unchanged. Reddit doesn't do anything to them either, so it's just whatever a user has posted and has been upvoted, regardless of factual accuracy.
Load More Replies... #73
TIL that Prince used a photo of Dave Chappelle dressed as him and serving pancakes for one of his singles' cover.
Featherytoad 10 months ago
Brad Garrett (Everybody Loves Raymond) is on the back cover of ELOs album, Discovery.
#74
TIL that from 2003 to 2005, Dell sold over 11 million computers with leaky capacitors, with documents indicating that Dell was aware they were almost certain to fail. At one point, 1,000 computers that Dell delivered to the law firm that was defending it in a related lawsuit started failing.
#75
TIL that Alaska has a much higher rate of missing persons per 100,000 residents than any other state, standing at a stark 42.16 compared to the next highest, Arizona, with 12.28.
Stan Brooks 10 months ago
A large percentage of them are missing or murdered indigenous women.
KrazyChiMama 10 months ago
There’s also a lot more predators in Alaska…all kinds human and animal…
Peter Bear 10 months ago
Because Alaska is *huge* and also has a very low population. More space to get lost in.
#76
TIL that after George Harrison's death from lung cancer, his widow sued a doctor at the hospital where he received radiation therapy for allegedly forcing Harrison to listen to his son play guitar and autograph the guitar while lacking his mental faculties.
Michelle C 10 months ago
I’m not normally in favor of lawsuits, but I can understand her anger.. that doctor violated the Hippocratic oath in every possible respect. I’ll never understand how a public servant especially can take advantage of other people like that.
She who must not be named 10 months ago
I think it means the doctors son, not Harrisons. So whilst Harrison was ill he was forced to listen to the doctors son play guitar and then made to sign the guitar when he wasn't really mentally capable of making those decisions for himself. Doctor took advantage of him and broke the hippocratic oath
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Lee451 Henderson 10 months ago
Was he lacking mental facilities because he was forced to listen to his son play the guitar?
#77
TIL an American photographer lost and fatally stranded in Alaskan wilderness was ignored by a state trooper plane because he raised his fist which is the sign of all okay.
Ace 10 months ago
In some systems one raised arm, one lowered, signals 'No', as in No, I don't need help.
Andrew Keir 10 months ago
Or potentially "No, I'm not all right" ? Confusing ...
Load More Replies... #78
TIL when David Lynch was asked by fans for clues or answers regarding one of his films, he'd typically refuse; however when fans in France asked him for clues to help them decipher Mulholland Drive (2001), he gave them 10. "I thought the clues were only going to exist in France & then..the internet."
#79
TIL that during WWII the average recruit was 5’8” tall and weighed 144 pounds. During basic training, they gained 5-20 pounds and added an inch to their 33 1/4” chest.
Geoffrey Scott 10 months ago
I went in to USCG at 5'8" and 120#, came out at 145#. People at home were amazed.
#80
TIL: Maria Rasputin, Rasputin's daughter, after his death worked as a cabaret dancer, then for the Busch Circus. In one season, she became a lion tamer. She was eventually mauled by a bear and left the circus to work as a riveter in the US before dying in LA.
#81
TIL that when Winona Ryder was offered the role of Joyce Byers, she agreed on the condition that she would be allowed time off to film a sequel to Beetlejuice if it began filming while Stranger Things was still in production.
#82
TIL there is currently a worldwide shortage of black pepper and the price-per-ton has almost tripled since January 2023.
#83
TIL Christa McAuliffe, who was the teacher who died on the Space Shuttle Challenger, was 1 of 11,000 applicants in NASA's search to find an "ordinary person" to put their first civilian in space. She later remarked, "If you're offered a seat on a rocket ship, don't ask what seat. Just get on."
Data1001 10 months ago
I also learned just a few months ago, that it is likely that everyone on board the Challenger did not die when the ship came apart, but were alive until it crashed back on Earth. Makes it all the more horrific a tragedy.
Peeka_Mimi 10 months ago
I think it took 13 minutes to crash to earth. They have the recordings but will, rightfully, not release them.
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KrazyChiMama 10 months ago
This was awful I remember it too well because it was my sixth grade teachers college roommate on board…she was so proud of her friend and I’ll never forget how devastated she was after the crash…she was never the same :( I love you Mrs. R <3
Bi.Felicia 10 months ago
Christa and I were both born in Boston and have the same birthday, just different years. I've noticed there are a couple roads/highways around Mass, that have been dedicated to her.
#84
TIL - the family that couldn't sleep, a family in Venice, Italy where for over 200 years many of the family members died suffering from fatal insomnia.
She who must not be named 10 months ago
Fatal familial insomnia (FFI) is a rare, genetic, and life-threatening prion disease that causes progressive insomnia, cognitive decline, and other symptoms that worsen over time. The disease is caused by an abnormal variation in the PRNP gene, which regulates the production of human prion protein. Most cases are familial, while the rest occur sporadically. FFI causes insomnia that worsens to the point of severely impacting daily life, eventually leading to coma and death.
Lupita Nyong'heaux 10 months ago
FFI was on an episode of Watson. i had never heard of it until then.
#85
TIL that Gene Roddenberry originally did not want to cast Patrick Stewart as Picard, since he had envisioned an actor who was "masculine, virile, and had a lot of hair".
Michelle C 10 months ago
It’s a good thing he did cast Sir Patrick Stewart because I can’t envision anyone else as Jean-Luc Picard!
Panda Panda Bo Banda 10 months ago
There are TNG casting photos of Stewart dressed as Picard and wearing a hairpiece. Google it!
Data1001 10 months ago
There are shots (maybe video) of Stewart wearing a wig as part of screen tests, and he looks about as ridiculous as you'd imagine, lol.
cerinamroth 10 months ago
IIRC, he did issue a statement afterwards saying how wrong he'd been and that he was the perfect choice.
cerinamroth 10 months ago
*doesn't* - thankfully, this wonderful man is still among us!
Load More Replies... #86
TIL in 1902, one day after being jailed for a fight, a man named Ludger Sylbaris survived for four days while the pyroclastic flow from Mt. Pelée k**led 30,000. His jail cell was a former ammunition storehouse with thick walls and no windows apart from one ventilation shaft.
Hell'n Damnation 10 months ago
Pyroclastic is a fun word to say. It doens't come up in conversation often enough.
Zero Costa 10 months ago
well they /think/ it was a fight, and his name /might/ have been ludger sylbaris. turns out he was quite the liar
Panda Panda Bo Banda 10 months ago (edited)
I doubt it. He would have been cooked like a goose.
Norm Gilmore 10 months ago
No, he wasn't.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludger_Sylbaris
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#87
TIL that digambara monks don’t wear clothes, don’t bathe or clean their teeth, sleep on the ground, only eat food free of pain, cutting or destruction, pluck all the hair off their head and face by hand, and only walk on well-worn, well-lit paths to avoid stepping on insects.
Zaach 10 months ago
There was a job available for people to feed blood sucking insects; they would have their arms and legs stretched out with ropes to prevent them from killing the insects
Lyone Fein 10 months ago
I think they also wear gauze face masks constantly in order to avoid breathing in insects and thereby accidentally killing the small beings. Digambara Jains are also known as "sky clad".
KrazyChiMama 10 months ago
Never cleaning your teeth can have devastating effects on your health :(
#88
TIL according to the US women's clothing catalog sizes system, a 2011 size 0 is equivalent to a 2001 size 2, and is larger than a 1970 size 6 or 1958 size 8.
Kim Kermes 10 months ago
I feel much better about having to buy XL or larger in cheapest brand. In 1975 I needed a size 2 but couldn't afford the few brands which made them
Lady Eowyn 10 months ago
Women's clothing sizes are so far into lala land that it's almost impossible to keep up with what the manufacturers are doing,
Mel in Georgia 10 months ago
My weight didn't really change after high school until recently (thanks, menopause!). In the late 70s I wore a size 5 jr. (US). 10 years ago I wore a size 00. US clothing sizing is insane.
The Majestic Opossum 6 months ago
This is why it drives me nuts when you hear over and over "Marilyn Monroe wore a size 12", as if she was average size. That's the equivalent of a size 4 today!! 🙄
Huddo's sister 10 months ago (edited)
In the US...which other places do import, but not large scale.
#89
TIL Robert F. Kennedy's a*sassin is still alive and has been denied parole 17 times.
Michelle C 10 months ago
RFK, Jr., has been clear that he has forgiven his father’s assassin. I do disagree with him that Sirhan Sirhan should receive parole, however.
Peter Bear 10 months ago
RFK Jr. has a worm eating his brain, so I don't much care what he thinks.
Load More Replies... SmooshieFries 10 months ago
Take a life, lose yours. I don’t necessarily mean the death penalty, but if you commit a planned murder- you lose your life to one behind bars. I just watched a docudrama with Laura Dern where a man was convicted of murdering his three small daughters by arson. There was proof he did not do it but the Gov of TX was a firm believer in the death penalty and refused to even look at the new proof he was innocent of their deaths. He was killed by lethal injection
superfluous 10 months ago
I am confused by the story you used to...illustrate...your first sentence? If he was innocent and killed what does that have to do with locking someone up without parole for murder?
Load More Replies... #90
TIL the United States Army is the largest single employer of musicians in the country.
Kim Kermes 10 months ago
Because most musicians are self employed, and the next largest employers of musicians are symphony orchestras, maybe 100 at most. Many orchestras only contract with musicians who aren't used in most pieces.
#91
TIL that in 1997, a crew member on the USS Yorktown (CG-48) entered 0 into a database field. It caused the Remote Data Base Manager to attempt to divide by zero, causing all machinery on the network to stop working, including the propulsion system.
Andrew Keir 10 months ago
... and they have an infinite number of ways of showing this
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#92
TIL of a disgruntled designer for SimCopter (1996) that created an Easter Egg that would spawn "shirtless men in Speedo trunks who hugged and kissed each other" in great numbers on certain dates, such as Friday the 13th. But the RNG he created for it malfunctioned, leading them to appear frequently.
David Houde 10 months ago
Easter eggs in software is great! I put a few in during my career. I actually got a call a few years back from a job I had left about two years before. "Did you put this into the code?" 🤣 Yup, that was me!
#93
TIL the richest person in the world was Mansa Musa, the 14th Century West African ruler, perhaps equal to $400bn in today's money. When he traveled to Cairo, he gave out so much gold that it depreciated the value of gold and caused over a billion dollars in economic losses in the Middle East.
Panda McPandaface 10 months ago
If the old 'adjusted for inflation' thing is employed, there have been a fair few, so yes, the previous fact is debatable.
Load More Replies... #94
TIL Dr. Pepper promised a free can to everyone in the US (except Slash and Buckethead) if Guns N' Roses released "Chinese Democracy" in 2008, but faced a lawsuit when they couldn't deliver after the album's release.
#95
TIL the UK's nuclear submarines all carry identitcally worded "Letters of Last Resort" which are handwritten by the current Prime Minister and destroyed when the Prime Minister leaves office.
Beak Hookage 10 months ago
I hope at least one of them has included the lyrics to "We'll Meet Again"
Andrew Keir 10 months ago
No, just the commands - 1 - Bend down, and - 2 - kiss your 'bottom' goodbye
Load More Replies... cerinamroth 10 months ago
The on-board shredders must have been working overtime in the post-Brexit "leadership" catastrophe!
#96
TIL There isn’t a single stop sign in Paris.
Beak Hookage 10 months ago
I've been there and it's not just stop signs that are absent; road markings in general seem to have been largely forgone. People park everywhere and anywhere, but you haven't really seen just how insane it is until you've been up inside the Arc De Triomph and looked down at the traffic moving through and around it. No lanes, no signs, no nothing. People just seemed to be driving in a sort of Brownian motion and it was hypnotic to see. I should add that I saw not one single accident the entire time I was there.
#97
TIL that in Major League Baseball the ball is pitched so fast that the eye cannot track it. However, the brain is able to calculate its trajectory via specialized cells, making it possible for the batter to hit it.
#98
TIL every person who has become a centibillionaire (a net worth of usually $100 billion, €100 billion, or £100 billion), first became one in 2017 or later except for Bill Gates who first reached the threshold in 1999.
KrazyChiMama 10 months ago
I don’t really see how we can stop people from making and saving money?
Load More Replies... #99
TIL: The Lord of the Rings is presented as a translation of a book originally written in Westron, the common speech of Middle-earth. Therefore, Frodo Baggins' real name in Westron is Maura Labingi.
Michelle C 10 months ago
The Professor was a linguist and made up Many other languages, almost all of them based on Scandinavian languages and Welsh, if I remember correctly.
Ace 10 months ago
Wider influences than that, much of it also came from Old English and other related Germanic languages. Finnish, too, inspired some of the Elvish vocabulary.
Load More Replies... #100
TIL: A scientist involved in the US nuke project determined the age of the world, created the clean room, and campaigned against leaded gasoline because it was poisoning everyone.
Nimitz 9 months ago
All heavy elements decay down to lead so you can use the amount present to date things. The problem was that while trying to determine the age of the Earth, he couldn't find ANY samples that didn't contain lead. It was entirely due to his work that we stopped putting it in gasoline and poisoning everyone. Fun fact, elevated levels of lead have been attributed to entire generations getting dumber and more aggressive as those are symptoms of long term exposure. Sound like anyone we know?
#101
TIL accoding to the FAA, air traffic controller applicants must be under the age of 31 and generally must retire at age 56.
SmooshieFries 10 months ago
I just pulled into LAX- I can try to do a live age poll if y’all like
Toothless Feline 10 months ago
It’s a mental fitness requirement. Being an ATC is one of the most stressful jobs there is, and it takes its toll over a 25-year career.
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#102
TIL about 'Balconing' in Ibiza, a phenomenon in which intoxicated party goers die or are injured by acting wildly on the balconies of the hotel establishments where they have stayed.
Huddo's sister 10 months ago (edited)
We may not have a word for this but it happens, I'm willing to bet, all over the world. The Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia is also notorious for it, especially over 'schoolies' week. Anywhere there are intoxicated people with baconies.
#103
TIL that in 1519, Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés sank his own ships except one after landing in Mexico to prevent his men from retreating, This bold move forced them to march inland and ultimately led to the fall of the Aztec Empire.
Panda Panda Bo Banda 10 months ago
Weird because there was never any chance of defeat. The Aztecs fell in days.
Andrew Keir 10 months ago
There was every chance of defeat - the Spanish were monumentally outnumbered, but the Aztecs didn't put up much of a fight, fsr.
Load More Replies... #104
TIL Saudi Arabia does not have a single flowing river on its land.
David Houde 10 months ago (edited)
I'll bet they are going to put one into that 170 km long mega city they started building.
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Andrew Keir 10 months ago
And the biggest desert in the world is, officially, Antarctica - because it has almost no rainfall. Or snowfall, either.
#105
TIL about Stewart Smith who, over the course of 40 years, breed non-native fish in his garage and covertly released them from his car which was outfitted with oxygenated fish tanks into New Zealand’s north island waterways for sport fishing.
Data1001 10 months ago
Messing with the natural habitat and ecosystem of any area is fraught with peril.
Andrew Keir 10 months ago
Like the genius who imported rabbits into Australia
Load More Replies... Norm Gilmore 10 months ago
An absolute eco terrorist slime bucket... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Stewart_Smith#:~:text=Over%20the%20course%20of%20several,ecosystems%20has%20been%20permanently%20altered.
#106
TIL that under New York City, on the lower concourse of Grand Central Station, there’s a windowless, 440-seat oyster and seafood bar that has been serving customers since the terminal’s opening in 1913. Except for brief closures for a fire in 1997 and COVID-19 it has operated continuously.
kaycee14 10 months ago
Grand Central Terminal, not station. A station in a stop between 2 endpoints. Grand Central is a terminus. Trains stop there and then turn around and head back the way they came.
Ace 10 months ago
There are termini all over the world named something Station. I could name at least half a dozen in London alone.
Load More Replies... Bi.Felicia 10 months ago
It would be nice if they included the name of said oyster and seafood bar.
halazia 9 months ago
Google is your friend. It's simply called the Grand Central Oyster Bar & Restaurant.
Load More Replies... #107
TIL 10 US states have absolutely no vehicle inspection whatsoever (i.e no safety, emissions, or VIN inspections).
Zaach 10 months ago
During the 'drive 55' era, it was demanded that a ticket be issued for anyone caught speeding; Montana proceeded to issue $5.00 pollution tickets. Prior Montana's posted speed limit for cars was 'cautious and prudent'. We had a 56 Chevy up to 130 MPH when the windshield wipers were ripped off by the wind (and, of course, there was a huge thunderstorm following so we had to drive about 20 MPH with head out the window to see)
Jerzy Janeczko 10 months ago
A standard 1956 Chevrolet, like a Bel Air, would not be able to reach 130 mph; the top speed for a typical model would be significantly lower, likely around 100 mph depending on the engine option and road conditions; however, a specially modified 1956 Chevrolet Corvette could potentially reach speeds close to 130 mph, especially with racing modifications.
Load More Replies... David Houde 10 months ago (edited)
I live in one of those states. We used to have emission testing. The state decided to cancel that program since if your vehicle failed you could go to a mechanic to get a "low emission tune up". Then you would get retested. If it failed again, then you showed proof of the low emission tune up and the testor would give you a wavier that exempted your vehicle from emissions requirements. SOURCE: I was certified to perform the Michigan auto emissions test (AET) that was required in much of the 90's. The program was a joke.
michael blacklock 10 months ago
UK has MOT TEST (MINISTRY OF TRANSPORT) every year for cars over 3 years. Covers all moving parts and emissions. Failure on one item means off the road until repairs are done and retested.
Forrest Hobbs 10 months ago
(The actual Ministry of Transport is long gone; we've got the Department for Transport these days) MOT test details here: https://www.gov.uk/getting-an-mot/the-mot-test
Load More Replies... Lee451 Henderson 10 months ago
Actually, it is 12 states: Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Washington, and Wyoming.
Forrest Hobbs 9 months ago
36 US states have no vehicle safety inspections. Texas recently scrapped its vehicle safety inspections for non-commercial vehicles - so, 37 states allow dangerous automobiles on the road. More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_inspection_in_the_United_States andhere: https://us.haynes.com/blogs/tips-tutorials/what-know-about-vehicle-inspections-all-50-states
Load More Replies... Nice Beast Ludo 10 months ago
I need names... I need to relocate from Maryland if I ever want to drive again
halazia 9 months ago
To avoid them ..? They're there for a reason, they're good
Load More Replies... #108
TIL the total number of Americans over 7-feet tall is estimated between 85 and 150.
Mimi M 10 months ago
I was on the train once, sitting across from this huuuuuge guy - not just extremely tall, but large as well - a modern-day Mountain Man. I said, 'please don't hate me, but how tall are you?' He didn't mind at all and told me he was 6' 11". I told him that I was very disappointed, because I've been wanting to meet someone who was 7 feet tall. He smiled when I called him 'Shorty'. Probably the first and last time, but I think he got a kick out of it.
David Houde 10 months ago
Also, the odds of having played in the NBA during your life if you are 7 feet tall or taller is about one in six.
#109
TIL a study involving 75K adults compared the participants' preferred sleep timing (known as chronotype) with their actual sleep behavior & found regardless of one's preferred bedtime, everyone benefitted from turning in early. Being up late is not good for your mental health (suggested 1am bedtime).
Data1001 10 months ago
This seems like a study which would be difficult to do properly for an extended period. People who are 'night owls' also usually live in a society where normal hours of operation favor 'early birds' -- so I would guess that, on average, night owls would get less sleep overall because of the need to wake up earlier than they would prefer to -- and thus, going to sleep earlier would of course be better for them because it would mean more hours of sleep. To do a study like this properly, you'd need to have people in a segregated society where they could work, shop, and socialize at any hour of the day just as effectively as any other hour of the day (or night), and keep that up for at least a couple months. This would not be logistically very likely for a large enough sample size.
Joe Bloe 10 months ago
I think it's linked to sunrise and light more than anything else.
Load More Replies... #110
TIL The Marvels (2023) has the biggest estimated nominal loss for a movie at $237 million.
Skywitness 10 months ago
When Pixar was purchased by Disney, the Pixar staff emphasized how important a good plot was. Evidently Disney has refused to learn that.
Data1001 10 months ago
That movie was proof that no matter how much money you throw at a project, if the writing and direction aren't good, it ain't gonna make one speck of difference.
Toothless Feline 10 months ago
The stupid part is that it’s no worse a movie than several other post-Endgame MCU movies. Part of what killed its box office take was the actors’ strike, which prevented the cast members from doing any publicity for the film. The strike ended at the same time the movie was released. When the movie became available for streaming on Disney+, it actually became quite popular, and its RT audience score went way up. Besides, how can you not enjoy the sequence of the Flerkittens eating the station crew set to the tune of “Memory” from *Cats*? 😸
Load More Replies... Michael None 9 months ago
Just wait til the Rey star wars movie comes out. Disney is doubling down on the biggest flop they had. I doubt anyone will go.
#111
TIL that in 1975, Twentieth Century Music Corp sued a restaurant owner for copyright infringement for playing a radio broadcast of two of their songs in his establishment, arguing it constituted an unremunerated performance. It reached the Supreme Court, which sided with the restaurant owner.
Nice Beast Ludo 10 months ago
How did they find out that 2 songs were played in a restaurant???
Janissary35680 10 months ago (edited)
It was likely a setup so that the case could be litigated and a precedent established.
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#112
Today I learned that Joey, the spin-off of the Friends sitcom, was canceled halfway through its second season, and the final eight episodes were never aired in the U.S. by NBC.
Huddo's sister 10 months ago (edited)
That shouldn't be surprising, it was terrible. I think I managed 10 minutes max of the first episode. I think people expected it to be funny because the character had some silly funny lines, but you look deeper and realise of all the characters, his was the most on-the-nose. Single guy, just wanting to hook up, not having steady work, could barely look after himself...
#113
TIL Mr Bean’s (Rowan Atkinson) son is a Gurkha.
Forrest Hobbs 10 months ago
Rowan Atkinson's son was a British officer in the Brigade of Gurkhas - not himself a Gurkha. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigade_of_Gurkhas and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gurkha
Brian Hawley 10 months ago
I once asked an SAS trooper if there was any one they feared. He said Yes, Gurkhas.
Load More Replies... #114
TIL the British military once had an idea to put live chickens inside nuclear bomb cases with a week's worth of food and water. The bombs were meant to be planted into the ground as mines, so they had to be kept warm in the winter to keep working.
Forrest Hobbs 10 months ago (edited)
This was the proposed Blue Peacock nuclear landmine intended to be deployed in Germany - never developed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Peacock#Chicken-powered_nuclear_bomb. Why "Blue Peacock"? Some explanation here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_Code. The job of the chickens was to keep the installation warm enough so that the timers and all the other gadgetry would keep working. And then get vapourised by the nuclear explosion going off from the devices buried in West Germany to defend against a potential Soviet invasion. Sane minds prevailed...
superfluous 10 months ago
Thank you. I was wondering what the heck the chickens were for! So delay was 1 week plus starvation time + body cooling time, then BIG kaboom? Sane minds indeed.
Load More Replies... TotallyNOTAFox 10 months ago (edited)
The bombs needed to be kept warm, the chicken wasn`t the detonating factor
Load More Replies... #115
TIL that an airgapped laptop was intentionally loaded with 6 famously catastrophic computer viruses, worms, and pieces of Malware for the commissioned art piece titled "The Persistence of Chaos". Much of the $10,000+ spent to produce the work went toward the creation of an effective firewall.
Nice Beast Ludo 10 months ago
I believe I did this to my parents computer in highschool by illegally downloading music. Over and over and over. In fact, one of the downloads was likely titled nelly.overandover.trojanhorsereplicator- DOWNLOAD *click*!
Nice Beast Ludo 10 months ago
In my defense, I was 15, only cared about music and was never allowed to use the computer except for schoolwork. My sisters were 12 and allowed to chat online all night. Half the time with MY FRIENDS so of course I said f**k you gateway and f**k you parents. I think I shut that thing down at least every 3-4 months but got some bad a*s mix CDs out of it
Load More Replies... David 10 months ago
If the laptop was air gapped why did it need a firewall? (assuming wireless disabled)
Andrew Keir 10 months ago
CDs, DVDs, and USB connections need to be firewalled too ?
Load More Replies... #116
TIL United States is the only country in the world which applies the same tax regime to all its citizens, regardless of where they live.
FlamingZombies 10 months ago
And that tax rate is soon to be 0 while cutting all of the social safety net programs.
Load More Replies... Otto Katz 10 months ago
That's federal tax. But each state may have it's own income tax on it's citizens, and then there may be city taxes, or like in NYC, borough taxes. So it's different.
Adrian 10 months ago
I think they mean if they live in another country...
Load More Replies... #117
TIL Mavs GM Nico Harrison, while working at Nike in 2013 botched the presentation to Steph Curry, where he called him Seth, & the presentation he used was made for Kevin Durant. This, along with not offering Curry a signature shoe, caused Curry to switch from Nike & sign with Under Armor.
Beth Wheeler 10 months ago
Oh who care. A rich athlete was still paid a buttload of money by another company. The guy from Nike screwed up probably got fired.
#118
TIL Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017) is the most expensive independent film ever made with a production budget of around $180 million. Although it grossed $226 million worldwide, it was considered a box-office bomb due to its high production and advertising costs.
David 10 months ago
Kiki, The two are related and usually a cause - effect thing, but sometimes a really bad movie manages to turn a decent profit. And sometimes a decent movie is still a box office bomb for other reasons such as limited release, other movies released at the same time, world events that affected how the movie was accepted and so on. I recall a couple of times reading about movie releases that were delayed or canceled due to something that happened IRL. A school shooting or the twin towers attack - stuff where the movie had elements that would have made the release at that time seem insensitive or offensive.
Load More Replies... TotallyNOTAFox 10 months ago
Statements about production budgets don't include marketing and screening costs though
Annik Perrot 10 months ago
I loved the comic books/ graphic novels? and I was extremely disappointed by the movie. That baby-faced Valerian, for one...
#119
TIL that Mr.Dink’s name is an acronym for Double Income No Kids; this is why he was able to afford gadgets that were “very expensive”.
Andrew Keir 10 months ago
Some rich guy who got married but had, er, 'bedroom problems', maybe ?
Load More Replies... #120
TIL that Gabe Newell owns a marine research company, and now mostly lives at sea on his boats and submarines.
Explore more of these tags
What do you think ?
Forrest Hobbs 10 months ago
Not sure all these "facts" really are facts, but fascinating in any case. Thank you, BP.
2WheelTravlr 10 months ago (edited)
I use lists like this as a jumping off point for further research. It's definitely led me down some fun rabbit holes.
Load More Replies... Dorothy Smith 9 months ago
Really enjoyed this post. So many informed people and great comments. More frequently would be nice also.
Hidalgo 10 months ago
TIL about Krasnov https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/donald-trump-recruited-kgb-codename-34727486#
Forrest Hobbs 10 months ago
Not sure all these "facts" really are facts, but fascinating in any case. Thank you, BP.
2WheelTravlr 10 months ago (edited)
I use lists like this as a jumping off point for further research. It's definitely led me down some fun rabbit holes.
Load More Replies... Dorothy Smith 9 months ago
Really enjoyed this post. So many informed people and great comments. More frequently would be nice also.
Hidalgo 10 months ago
TIL about Krasnov https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/donald-trump-recruited-kgb-codename-34727486#
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