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“Today I Learned”: 30 Interesting Facts You Might Not Know About The World (New Posts)
With the hustle and bustle of everyday life, our minds are always buzzing. Every time we hop online, we’re bombarded with endless amounts of news, data, and entertainment, and it’s bound to make heads spin! While the digital world makes sure our brains never really stop, thankfully, there’s a beloved corner of the internet that helps us feel less overwhelmed by featuring the tastiest bitesize nuggets of information we all appreciate.
We’re talking about the 'Today I Learned' online community, the perfect outlet to pique our curiosity and boost our intelligence. With over 28.8 million members, the group celebrates knowledge by sharing some of the most intriguing and lesser-known things, facts, and truths that can be quickly consumed and understood.
Below, we wrapped up the freshest batch of surprising and valuable tidbits from this powerhouse to add some much-needed value to our feeds. So grab your notebooks and your thinking caps and get ready for an informative ride as you scroll down this list. Be sure to upvote your favorite facts, and then spread some words of wisdom in the comments! Psst! For more goodness from the TIL world, check out Bored Panda's earlier pieces here, here, and right here.
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#1
TIL Hummingbirds have an exceptional memory due to an enlarged hippocampus. This allows them to remember the exact location of specific hummingbird feeders along their migration path from North America to Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central America.
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#2
TIL that at the ancient Olympics, cheating athletes would be fined and the fines used to build bronze statues at the entrance of the Olympic stadium, each inscribed with the name of the cheater and how they cheated
UncleRussian 2 years ago
We should start doing this again, let's see how many statues we can make for doping
#3
TIL of the 'Fry and Turnbull effect' on prostate cancer in the UK. In 2008 news presenter Bill Turnbull and broadcaster Stephen Fry both had a prostate cancer diagnosis and urged other men to come forward for help. It caused a 36% increase in patients receiving treatment the following year.
#4
TIL that Jimmy Carter, at 97, is the oldest living President, the longest-lived President, and also has the longest retirement ( 41 years ) of any President
Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 2 years ago
He's also one of the most amazing, nicest and most altruistic humans ever born.
#5
TIL Freddie Mercury’s introductory scatting vocal on "Under Pressure" was improvised during an experiment suggested by David Bowie, as Brian May recalls it: "David said, 'Okay, let’s each of us go in the vocal booth and sing how we think the melody should go and we’ll compile a vocal out of that.'"
#6
TIL the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was founded by FDR's New Deal in 1933. In its 9 year existence the CCC employed nearly 3 million men, planted over 3.5 billion trees, and established more than 700 state parks. It was the most rapid peacetime mobilization in US history.
#7
TIL The Carmen Sandiego Show (1991-1995; 295 episodes) was created partially in response to the results of a National Geographic survey that indicated Americans had alarmingly little knowledge of geography, with one in four being unable to locate the Soviet Union or the Pacific Ocean.
Bella10 2 years ago
I’m very bemused by the amount of Americans that think Alaska is an island near Hawaii 😳
Victoria Pitt 2 years ago
I've never met anyone who thought this, but to be fair it's not exactly brought up in conversation every day.
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Jody Whitmarsh 2 years ago
I think if our education system was more interactive like this show, Americans would retain more. Instead, it's just repeat and regurgitate information. No critical thinking. No retention. Ask any American that grew up watching Animaniacs and I bet they can name the presidents and the states capitals because of the catchy songs in that show. It was interactive. It was effective. And of course, it was fun
Owen Jarvis 2 years ago
Everyone should own an accurate globe. They're very useful, (you will use it more than you think) and they look nice too. :]
Hex Gurls 2 years ago
i LOVE thé cartoon and ive never met anyone else who’s watched it 😭😭
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RandomFrog(He/They️️) 2 years ago
Ok but they don’t teach us geography until ninth grade, and even then who’s gonna remember that half year where you had to cram a bunch of info about places you don’t care about. I could tell you virtually anything about Texas and Utah (the two places I grew up, so the two places I have the most history knowledge) but I can’t tell you where England is if it’s not labeled. I am ashamed of it but you have to understand they just don’t teach us it.
Bubbles and sparks 2 years ago
At this time, I think in many countries that is still a problem...
Victoria Anderson 2 years ago
I found full episodes of the 90s series on YouTube, binge-watched seasons 1-4. When my mom brought home a complete DVD collection, I legit jumped for joy. Now I'm working ahead in my classes so I can afford to take time off and watch the Netflix series.
Dumpster Fire 2 years ago
Everything I know about geography I learned from Carmen San Diego. PBS was awesome!
UselessKnowledgeFont 2 years ago
Yeah, that part is odd since by 1991 it no longer "existed"
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Carole Rutter 1 year ago
I lived in America for five years. I thought the people were wonderful - I admired their warmth, friendliness and patriotism. But I found them appalling ignorant about the rest of the world. The most common thing was that they thought Australia was a tiny island (and we all had pet kangaroos and koalas). They really freaked out when I showed them a map of Australia superimposed over a map of the continental USA and they realised that they are almost the same size.
Ralph Watkins 1 year ago
While stationed in Germany I had a friend of mine there from Ghana. She worked next to the enlisted club. Many of the young GIs would come over & hit on her & tried to impress her with their superior American education. Most times when she said she was Ghana & mentioned Africa, the dumb Americans would correct her. Oh, your third world education didn't teach you what continent you are from. Ghana is in South America, not Africa. Dumb little girl. That upset her to no end. Many of the other guys had no idea where Ghana was anyways. Probably some city in the US they never heard of. Yes, a few thought black people only came from America.
Michelle C 2 years ago
I absolutely loved that show growing up and I will definitely introduce it to my kids if I ever have children!
Al Christensen 2 years ago
I've known way too many people who couldn't find on a map — even roughly — where they lived. Others can't even point north, south, east or west. And they don't care.
Jay Walsh 2 years ago
I'm rather amused how Europeans have no context of the scale of North America. They don't seem to realize the distance between say, New York City, and Denver Colorado is more than the distance between Greece, Italy and Copenhagen, Denmark They seem to think it's a cab ride away from JFK airport
Jack Holt 2 years ago
I think it goes both ways in a cultural context. American's always argue that their country is so big and has so much diversity, but Europe and the USA do not represent the world alone. The rest of the world is not devoid of people, you know?
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tuzdayschild 2 years ago
I knew before I finished reading this post that the bashing would soon commence.
Michael Largey 2 years ago
I was in my 40s when this kids show was on, but I watched it for the singing group.
BluEyedSeoulite 2 years ago
Tbf, Russia/USSR was one of our biggest "enemies" for decades. And it is one of the biggest countries in the world. Does know it's location define our intelligence? No. But it doesn't bode well for global literacy, which America always scores extremely low in
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TIL award-winning writer William Goldman would make up bedtime stories for his daughters (4yo & 7yo). One of them wanted tales of princesses, the other wanted brides, so he combined them. These stories became his next book: "The Princess Bride"
#9
TIL in 400 BCE Persian engineers created an ice machine in the desert.
Mirabelle Skyrim 2 years ago (edited)
The link might look odd, but it works, I tried it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakhch%C4%81l
#10
TIL For weeks, Ganeshpur, a village in eastern Bihar, India, had to put up with frequent power outages that only seemed to occur a few hours after sunset. It was later revealed that an electrician was cutting the village's power whenever he wanted to see his girlfriend in secrecy in the dark.
#11
TIL that a drop of water spends an average of nine days in the atmosphere before falling back to Earth. If it should fall in the ocean it may take it over 3000 years before evaporating again.
#12
TIL that in 1956, the Comics Code Authority tried to prevent a story from being printed because it involved a black astronaut, even though this was never actually forbidden by the Code. Fortunately, the publisher managed to get the CCA to back down by threatening to take the matter to court.
Vorknkx 2 years ago (edited)
The Comic Code as a whole was quite ludicrous - it was all based on the absurd notion that portraying villains in even a slightly positive/cool light might make children want to become criminals when they grow up. Today we have the same BS with the whole "video games make kids violent" hysteria, even though there's no evidence to support this.
#13
TIL that when a poisonous gas leak was found at 11:45pm immediately before the Bhopal disaster in 1984 that killed thousands, a decision was made to do something about it after the 12:15am tea break.
#14
TIL The final episode of M*A*S*H was two and a half hours long and was viewed by an audience of 121 million.
#15
TIL Medieval myths surrounding salamanders being resistant to fire were due to salamanders habit of hibernating in logs… putting another log in the fire = salamander scurrying from the fire … leading people to believe they were “born of fire”.
#16
TIL Tonic water was created as an early prophylactic treatment against Malaria (due to the added Quinine) by the British army. They added Gin to improve taste and now we have the G&T.
#17
TIL somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean are the Disappointment Islands. Named by John Byron in 1765, because he found the natives to be hostile towads him.
UncleRussian 2 years ago
To be fair I would also be kinda pissed if some guy showed up and said "Your island is mine now"
#18
TIL The Golden Raspberry Awards has made retractions on two occasions. Bruce Willis had his Raspberry category retracted once it was discovered he was suffering from aphasia. Shelley Duvall's nomination was retracted because of Kubrick's mistreatment on The Shining.
Izzy Curer 2 years ago (edited)
"Aphasia - loss of ability to understand or express speech, caused by brain damage." Why would they take it away for that? Edit - "The Golden Raspberry Awards is a parody award show honoring the worst of cinematic under-achievements." Oh, I see.
#19
TIL: John Michell in 1783, published a paper speculating the existence of black holes, and was forgotten until the 1970s
David Paterson 2 years ago
I can confirm that. His idea was that if any star had a diameter more than 500 times that of the Sun, then Newtonian gravity would hide its light from us. It wasn't until very much later, circa 1930, that it was realised that a star could have an average density much higher than that of the metal osmium. The Chandrasekhar limit that was published 1930-1935 suddenly made the possibility of real black holes real.
#20
TIL that if two pieces of similar metals touch in a vacuum like outer space, and if both pieces are perfectly flat and polished, they will indeed fuse to effectively make one new piece. Atoms in the metals share electrons and bond permanently. This is called cold welding.
UncleRussian 2 years ago
Ah, so I take it technically speaking it would be easier to make certain alloys in space?
#21
TIL about rescue buoys used in the English channel in WWII. Designed to provide shelter for the pilots or crew of aircraft shot down or forced to make an emergency landing over water, they contained food, cigarettes, liquor, flares and even board games to pass the time.
#22
TIL the Carthaginian general Hannibal Barca was so terrifying to Rome that they would use the phrase "Hannibal is at the gates" whenever disaster struck. When the romans finally defeated Hannibal, they built statues of him in the streets of Rome to advertise their defeat of such a worthy adversary.
#23
TIL Lal Bihari Mritak is an Indian farmer and activist who was officially declared dead between 1975 and 1994. He fought with Indian bureaucracy for 19 years to prove that he is alive.
Owen Jarvis 2 years ago
This kind of sounds like a comedy. 'Sir, you are dead!' 'No I'm not!' 'We know you're dead, stop denying it!'
#24
TIL: In 1990 a courier was robbed on a street in London, England. The robber made off with bearer bonds to the value of £292 million. Today, this is equivalent to £758 million - or $1.086 billion USD. This is still the highest amount ever stolen in a street robbery.
#25
TIL Hans Christian Anderson was huge fanboy of Charles Dickens & annoyed the hell out of him by overstaying his welcome as a guest
Agnes Jekyll 2 years ago
Apparently HCA did this to many people---apparently, he was quite the annoying guest to just about everybody.
#26
TIL that in 2006, FBI agents attempted to arrest prison guards at the Federal Correctional Institution, Tallahassee, after having learnt the guards were trading drugs for sex with female inmates. One of the guards opened fire with a personal handgun, killing one agent and wounding another.
#27
TIL that in his famous paper, Computing Machinery And Intelligence, Alan Turing recommended that the Turing Test be performed in a 'telepathy-proof room' so the human couldn't use psychic powers to identify the computer
#28
TIL When a horse and donkey mate they make a mule (or hinnie). Mules are stronger than horses and donkeys of the same size and are more resilient to disease.
#29
TIL that the Allstate "Mayhem" actor Dean Winters, died for about 3 minutes, and was then revived. The infection that caused this also led to two toes and a thumb needing to be amputated.
#30
TIL that 95% of all thoroughbred racehorses today can trace their lineage back to a single horse, Darley Arabian, born over 300 years ago.
What do you think ?
marianne eliza 2 years ago (edited)
Stuff like this is why I watch a lot of PBS and Nat Geo documentaries. Heck. They've discovered that orange slime mold has intelligence. So now we know trump's genetic profile.
JustinTime 2 years ago
I just learned there was a for real murderer (possible serial killer) who was in the Exorcist!
marianne eliza 2 years ago (edited)
Stuff like this is why I watch a lot of PBS and Nat Geo documentaries. Heck. They've discovered that orange slime mold has intelligence. So now we know trump's genetic profile.
JustinTime 2 years ago
I just learned there was a for real murderer (possible serial killer) who was in the Exorcist!
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