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30 Rarely Heard Facts That May Leave Your Craving For Knowledge Sated, Courtesy Of This Page (New Facts)

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“You live and you learn,” as a saying, remains undefeated. In fact, it’s hard not to, unless you really really enjoy living under rocks, and even there you might discover all sorts of new bugs. Fortunately, most of us actually enjoy discovering more about the world we live in.

The “Today I Learned” internet group is a gold mine for anyone who enjoys bite-sized nuggets of knowledge. Historical trivia, little-known facts, and cool science details all feature, so get comfortable as you scroll through, upvote your favorite new facts and be sure to comment your thoughts below.

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#1

30 Rarely Heard Facts That May Leave Your Craving For Knowledge Sated, Courtesy Of This Page (New Facts) TIL that priest Father Damien worked in Hawaii for 16 years, providing comfort to the lepers. He built homes and he treated lepers with his medical expertise. He prayed and comforted the dying. He later contracted leprosy but continued to give to the people and helped improve an orphanage.

LandscapeKind4598 , William Brigham Report

Final score:

410points

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#2

30 Rarely Heard Facts That May Leave Your Craving For Knowledge Sated, Courtesy Of This Page (New Facts) TIL due to efficient recycling processes, 75% of all aluminium produced world wide is still in use today

ikilledmypc , Chad Davis Report

Final score:

357points

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#3

30 Rarely Heard Facts That May Leave Your Craving For Knowledge Sated, Courtesy Of This Page (New Facts) TIL Emma Gibson, frozen as an embryo in 1992, was born in 2017 to a mother born in 1991.

sanandrios , Amina Filkins Report

Final score:

304points

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Despite their ubiquity, most people never stop to ask what makes a fact fun. Most of the time, particularly in school, facts were everything but fun, obnoxious, confusing, and on the test, which never really makes anything enjoyable. Even now, most people only enjoy trivia related to topics they are interested in and even then, within limits.

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But the real, original fun facts come from chewing gum, where self-proclaimed tidbits of information would be printed inside the wrapper starting from the 1970s. How fun or not these facts were is a question each person has to answer themselves, but in the pre-smartphone era perhaps entertaining someone, even for a few seconds, was easier. Regardless, the idea, much like gum, stuck and spread to other industries.

#4

30 Rarely Heard Facts That May Leave Your Craving For Knowledge Sated, Courtesy Of This Page (New Facts) TIL That the Pink Panther cartoon show was created due to the success of the character in the opening credits of the Pink Panther films

gnome512 , Official Pink Panther Report

Final score:

301points

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#5

30 Rarely Heard Facts That May Leave Your Craving For Knowledge Sated, Courtesy Of This Page (New Facts) TIL the humming noise produced by electricity is a different tone in Europe than it is in the US. The American electrical hum is a B-flat whereas the European electrical hum is a G

Gapplesauce37 , Pixabay Report

Final score:

300points

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#6

30 Rarely Heard Facts That May Leave Your Craving For Knowledge Sated, Courtesy Of This Page (New Facts) TIL that Adolphe Sax, the son of instrument designers, was prone to accidents. As a kid, he fell from a 3-story height, drank acidic water he mistook for milk, swallowed a pin, fell into a frying pan, was burned in a gunpowder blast, and fell into a river. He grew up to invent the saxophone.

RedditPrat , Unknown author Report

Final score:

294points

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As with most things in the world, even the word trivia has some degree of trivia about it. The ancient Roman “triviae” described a place or intersection where a road split into two new roads. Naturally, such areas would get a lot of traffic and become “public spaces” which morphed into “commonplace,” as there were no doubt many “triviae” dotted across that road-building empire.

#7

TIL Buzz Aldrin's mother's maiden name was Moon.

Proper_Contest_4035 Report

Final score:

285points

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#8

30 Rarely Heard Facts That May Leave Your Craving For Knowledge Sated, Courtesy Of This Page (New Facts) TIL that when Will Smith was 12 his grandmother found his notebook of rap lyrics with curse words and wrote a note in it telling Will that truly smart people do not have to curse when expressing themselves. As a result he resolved not to use profanity in his music.

astarisaslave , Gage Skidmore Report

Final score:

284points

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#9

TIL Teófilo Stevenson, widely regarded as the greatest Olympic boxer of all time, was offered a million dollars to defect from Cuba and fight heavyweight world champion Muhammad Ali. Stevenson declined, asking "What is one million dollars compared to the love of eight million Cubans?"

GoodSamaritan_ Report

Final score:

282points

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These days, trivial is still used to describe things that really aren’t that complicated. The connection between “trivial” and “trivia” comes from Medieval higher education, where “common” subjects, grammar, rhetoric, and logic, were referred to as “the trivia.” Naturally, a student at the time would no doubt have to memorize all sorts of “trivia,” a label that seems to have stuck.

#10

30 Rarely Heard Facts That May Leave Your Craving For Knowledge Sated, Courtesy Of This Page (New Facts) TIL that Ancient Romans added lead syrup to wine to improve color, flavor, and to prevent fermentation. The average Roman aristocrat consumed up to 250μg of lead daily. Some Roman texts implicate chronic lead poisoning in the mental deterioration of Nero, Caligula, and other Roman Emperors.

breadlof , Commonists Report

Final score:

275points

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#11

TIL at least one of the victims of the Vesuvius Eruption in 79 C.E was found with a vitrified brain. In other words their brain was turned to glass due to the extreme heat.

Dragonbutt45 Report

Final score:

273points

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#12

TIL In 1973, Keith Moon, the drummer for rock band The Who, passed out in the middle of a show. A random guy from the audience named Scot Halpin walked on stage and filled in on drums to finish the show.

Capable-Site-301 Report

Final score:

243points

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However, about seven hundred years would pass between Medieval students and trivia as we see it today. In 1902, British aphorist Logan Pearsall Smith wrote “I know too much; I have stuffed too many of the facts of History and Science into my intellectuals. My eyes have grown dim over books; believing in geological periods, cave dwellers, Chinese Dynasties, and the fixed stars has prematurely aged me,” reflecting the overwhelming amount of knowledge he had accumulated.

#13

30 Rarely Heard Facts That May Leave Your Craving For Knowledge Sated, Courtesy Of This Page (New Facts) TIL toilet paper wasn’t “splinter free” until the 1930’s

Chewbock , Vlada Karpovich Report

Final score:

238points

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#14

30 Rarely Heard Facts That May Leave Your Craving For Knowledge Sated, Courtesy Of This Page (New Facts) TIL the biohazard symbol didn't symbolize or refer to anything originally. It's simply a shape that was picked as being symmetrical, hard to mistake, and easy to remember

JM1210 , atluxity Report

Final score:

221points

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#15

30 Rarely Heard Facts That May Leave Your Craving For Knowledge Sated, Courtesy Of This Page (New Facts) TIL that Brooke Greenberg, who died in 2013, had ‘Syndrome X’, which made her remain physically and cognitively similar to a 1 year old, despite being 20 years old at the time of her death.

_c4rdinal , Marcin Jozwiak Report

Final score:

208points

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But it wouldn’t be until the 1960s that this idea would really take off as a means of general entertainment. A game titled “Trivia” was published on February 5, 1965, by Ed Goodgold, who also started some of the first contests with the help of Dan Carlinsky. As it always happens, the year, their names, and general information about “trivia” have all become trivia and fun facts.

#16

TIL that in 2005, a Ph.D. student at the University of British Columbia nominated a fire hydrant to run for the Board of Governors (and even acted as its "translator"). The hydrant pulled in 900 votes, missing a seat by six ballots.

TheLeagueOfOwls Report

Final score:

204points

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#17

TIL that the place Julius Caesar was murdered, “Torre Argentina,” is now a cat sanctuary.

_c4rdinal Report

Final score:

200points

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#18

30 Rarely Heard Facts That May Leave Your Craving For Knowledge Sated, Courtesy Of This Page (New Facts) TIL Women’s shirt buttons are on the left-hand side because wealthy women used to be dressed by their maids and it was easier to access.

DwightKSchrute007 , Liza Summer Report

Final score:

199points

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#19

30 Rarely Heard Facts That May Leave Your Craving For Knowledge Sated, Courtesy Of This Page (New Facts) TIL that the Soviet space probe Phobos-2, , designed to explore Mars' moons, failed because 2 of its 3 computers died, and since it used a system where the computers voted on any decision, the 1 healthy computer was unable to outvote 2 dead computers

casualphilosopher1 , Perminov, The Difficult Road to Mars Report

Final score:

189points

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#20

TIL the meerkat is the world's most murderous mammal with 20% of all meerkats being violently killed by another meerkat, most commonly their mother, sister, or aunt

cwood1973 Report

Final score:

188points

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#21

TIL Song titles can't be copyrighted. You can legally title a song "Bohemian Rhapsody", "Stairway to Heaven", "Smells Like Teen Spirit" or any other already used song title.

TallEnoughJones Report

Final score:

180points

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#22

30 Rarely Heard Facts That May Leave Your Craving For Knowledge Sated, Courtesy Of This Page (New Facts) TIL; "Hello" came to prominence as a greeting with the invention of the telephone

Technical-Split3642 , lensletter Report

Final score:

164points

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#23

30 Rarely Heard Facts That May Leave Your Craving For Knowledge Sated, Courtesy Of This Page (New Facts) TIL that the least obese country in the world is Vietnam. Its obesity rates stands at only 2.1%, which is lower than Uganda (5.3%), and significantly lower than the U.S. (41.9%)

VegemiteSucks , Richard Mortel Report

Final score:

154points

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#24

30 Rarely Heard Facts That May Leave Your Craving For Knowledge Sated, Courtesy Of This Page (New Facts) TIL 98% of passengers involved in vehicle crashes in Dubai were not wearing seat belts

Double-decker_trams , Mike Bird Report

Final score:

154points

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#25

30 Rarely Heard Facts That May Leave Your Craving For Knowledge Sated, Courtesy Of This Page (New Facts) Til Americans have accumulated $21 billion Worth of unused gift cards. Almost 2/3 of people have a card and half of those will likely lose the gift card before using it

mankls3 , Mike Mozart Report

Final score:

148points

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#26

TIL that Bud Light's big marketing push in the 80s was Spuds Mackenzie, a dog presented as "a cool dude". Spuds was played by a female dog, named Honey Tree Evil Eye.

AlwaysTheNoob Report

Final score:

146points

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#27

TIL Crows and other bird species will coat themselves in ants. Researchers aren’t sure why birds do this, but have called the process “anting”.

Geek_Nan Report

Final score:

146points

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#28

30 Rarely Heard Facts That May Leave Your Craving For Knowledge Sated, Courtesy Of This Page (New Facts) TIL Charles Manson hypnotized Danny Trejo when they were in jail together.

peezle69 , Gage Skidmore Report

Final score:

134points

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#29

30 Rarely Heard Facts That May Leave Your Craving For Knowledge Sated, Courtesy Of This Page (New Facts) TIL Carrie Fisher’s ashes were placed inside a giant Prozac Pill

NamelessMexican , IMDb Report

Final score:

131points

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#30

30 Rarely Heard Facts That May Leave Your Craving For Knowledge Sated, Courtesy Of This Page (New Facts) TIL that Edward Teller, the physicist who advocated for Oppenheimer to lose his security clearance suggested using nukes to create artifical harbours, fracking oil and preventing hurricanes

RiseDarthVader , Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Report

Final score:

127points

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Note: this post originally had 77 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.

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Justin Sandberg

I am a writer at Bored Panda. Despite being born in the US, I ended up spending most of my life in Europe, from Latvia, Austria, and Georgia to finally settling in Lithuania. At Bored Panda, you’ll find me covering topics ranging from the cat meme of the day to red flags in the workplace and really anything else. In my free time, I enjoy hiking, beating other people at board games, cooking, good books, and bad films.

I am a writer at Bored Panda. Despite being born in the US, I ended up spending most of my life in Europe, from Latvia, Austria, and Georgia to finally settling in Lithuania. At Bored Panda, you’ll find me covering topics ranging from the cat meme of the day to red flags in the workplace and really anything else. In my free time, I enjoy hiking, beating other people at board games, cooking, good books, and bad films.

Rugilė Žemaitytė

As a Visual Editor at Bored Panda, my favorite part of the job involves browsing the web for the cutest cat pics, the funniest memes and eye-catching illustrations to brighten up your day!

As a Visual Editor at Bored Panda, my favorite part of the job involves browsing the web for the cutest cat pics, the funniest memes and eye-catching illustrations to brighten up your day!

Indrė Lukošiūtė

I am a Visual editor at Bored Panda, I'm determined to find the most interesting and the best quality images for each post that I do. On my free time I like to unwind by doing some yoga, watching all kinds of movies/tv shows, playing video and board games or just simply hanging out with my cat

I am a Visual editor at Bored Panda, I'm determined to find the most interesting and the best quality images for each post that I do. On my free time I like to unwind by doing some yoga, watching all kinds of movies/tv shows, playing video and board games or just simply hanging out with my cat

What do you think ?

Jerusalem Cat Syndrome 1 year ago

If you liked this list, _don't_ go to 31 Interesting Facts That Might Surprise You, As Shared On 'Factologys'.

2points

Jerusalem Cat Syndrome 1 year ago

If you liked this list, _don't_ go to 31 Interesting Facts That Might Surprise You, As Shared On 'Factologys'.

2points

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