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30 Rarely Heard Facts That May Leave Your Craving For Knowledge Sated, Courtesy Of This Page (New Facts)
“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
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.
#2
TIL due to efficient recycling processes, 75% of all aluminium produced world wide is still in use today
#3
TIL Emma Gibson, frozen as an embryo in 1992, was born in 2017 to a mother born in 1991.
Not-a-Clue (she/her) 1 year ago
Found the details https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-55164607
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.
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
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
#5
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
#6
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.
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.
#8
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.
#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?"
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
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.
Billy Harrelson 1 year ago
Well, the word plumbing comes from the Latin plumbum meaning lead as the pipes were all made of lead.
#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.
#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.
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
TIL toilet paper wasn’t “splinter free” until the 1930’s
#14
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
#15
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.
Russ Kincade 1 year ago
That's nothing. In the US we had an orange man with the cognitive abiltiy of a 6 year old who was elected president.
Panda Mona 1 year ago
Yes, but I am still more concerned about his emotional ability of an angry 3 year old. With the brain and heart of a nice 6 year old, you could do the job :-) maybe better than most presidents
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Monday 1 year ago
There have only been 7 confirmed cases of this Syndrome X and they have all been girls. There are boys that seemed to have similar symptoms, but in every reported case of a male child not aging they've been able to find a different cause like chromosomal transmutation or a damaged pituitary gland. It's as fascinating as it is tragic. Syndrome X sufferers' blood still ages normally (whatever the hell that means), so it's not like they have eternal youth, they're just stuck looking like infants.
Rob(erta) Roy 1 year ago
Do they get taller? Or if they're like "8" then can they read and write and talk and walk?
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Penelope Davis 1 year ago (edited)
I have a classmate that has a similar syndrome. He is cognitively 12, but was born 21 years ago. He is also on the spectrum, so it’s really upsetting to see a 21 in 6 grade, and not yet knowing how to deal with his ADHD (not knowing how to control himself) (I don’t mean to sound “aaurrgg! People with ADHD are so annoying! When will they learn to be normal!” I mean it as “hmm, he doesn’t know how to stop himself from making poor decisions, that’s ok, people usually learn to do that later in life”). I am just doing all this so I don’t get yelled at in the comments, and then I’ll have to respond to them all, apologizing . I’m apologizing ahead of time. I had a really hard time writing this in a way so that it offends the least amount of people.
JNo3277 1 year ago
I think you did a great job. I understand what you mean!
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David A Paterson 1 year ago
See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neotenic_complex_syndrome I hadn't heard of this one, I do know of Fragile X, progeria, and plenty of other disorders that cause extreme developmental delays. My daughter was physically 9 months and mentally 6 months at the time of her death at age 3. Extreme developmental delays are not uncommon.
RedMarbles 1 year ago
So sorry for your loss. It looks like neotenic complex syndrome is what they renamed Syndrome X, at least according to Brooke Greenberg's Wikipedia page. Brooke Greenberg - Wikipedia https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooke_Greenberg
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Aroace tiger (she/they/he) 1 year ago
I mean at least she wouldn't have known that something was wrong-?
Katy McMouse 1 year ago
Probably not, which would be a blessing. Poor girl.
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the sixthgirl 1 year ago
No. Musk has Dunning-Krugerand syndrome, which is when a South African a*****e thinks he's a genius just because he's rich.
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Azure Adams 1 year ago
I saw the documentary about her. Fascinating case. Hope the fam allow her body or some stuff to got to science and research.
Sophroniel 1 year ago (edited)
She grew to the size of roughly a toddler. It's weird to think she was six months older than me. She was born and child and died a child. Fragile X is a horrible condition.
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.
Mycroft1967 1 year ago
When I was in college, they put name signs on everyone's doors in the dorm. To make thing interesting some of my friends put the name "Turner Heaton" on the utility room. He got newsletters from the Resident Assistant the whole year. I also understand they signed him up for a couple things on campus.
#17
TIL that the place Julius Caesar was murdered, “Torre Argentina,” is now a cat sanctuary.
SoapsVonSoaps 1 year ago
I've been there. You can't go into the ruins but you can see the place where he was stabbed. The cats live there and we went to the sanctuary as well, this was 5 years ago.
#18
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.
GettingCereal 1 year ago
In those circles where women were dressed by maids, weren't men also dressed by valets?
#19
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
#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
Boredest Disabled Panda 1 year ago
Wow. Frankly I would have thought humans might take the top spot. But there's always meerkats to make me feel better about mankind!
#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.
#22
TIL; "Hello" came to prominence as a greeting with the invention of the telephone
#23
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%)
gerard julien 1 year ago
USA : Percent of adults aged 20 and over with overweight, including obesity: 73.6% (2017-2018) Source: National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey
#24
TIL 98% of passengers involved in vehicle crashes in Dubai were not wearing seat belts
PlatinumThe8-BitCat 1 year ago
I don’t know much about Dubai but what I have learned is that it’s filled with idiot rich people
#25
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
#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.
#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”.
#28
TIL Charles Manson hypnotized Danny Trejo when they were in jail together.
#29
TIL Carrie Fisher’s ashes were placed inside a giant Prozac Pill
#30
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
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'.
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'.
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