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"TIL in California all DUI convicts are made to sign “The Watson Admonishment”, which forces them to acknowledge the danger of DUI. If you are the cause of fatal DUI after signing this you are charged with murder rather than manslaughter." | todayilearned |
"TIL the so-called 'Autism Epidemic' isn't an epidemic at all but rather an increase in reported incidents due to a growing awareness of autism and changes to the condition’s diagnostic criteria." | todayilearned |
"TIL Salvador Dali once conned Yoko Ono into paying $10,000 for a single blade of grass. Yoko had offered to pay that amount for one of his mustache hairs. He substituted the blade of grass because he thought that Yoko Ono was a witch and might use his hair in a spell." | todayilearned |
"TIL if you get a zebrafish drunk and put it in a tank of sober zebrafish, the sober fish will adopt it as their leader and follow the drunk fish around the tank." | todayilearned |
"TIL Edgar Allen Poe died mysteriously after having been missing for six days. Though still alive when he was finally found, he was wearing someone else’s cheap clothes and not coherent enough to tell where he’d been. He had disappeared en route to his own wedding." | todayilearned |
"TIL British Parliament had an official discussion where they condemned the historical inaccuracies of the film U-571 and the rewriting of history to paint the Americans as heroes in an event they never even took part in. They felt it was unfair on the British sailors that lost their lives." | todayilearned |
"TIL about Peter principle that states if a person is competent at their job, it will get promoted until the person is incompetent at his new role. Then they remain stuck at that final level for the rest of their career. Therefore, in time, every post tends to be occupied by an incompetent employee." | todayilearned |
"TIL that when future US President Lyndon B. Johnson was Senate majority leader, he instructed his staff to make his scotch and soda significantly weaker than his guest’s, so that he could keep a clearer head" | todayilearned |
"TIL Pat Sajak and Vanna White work only 36 days per year. They work 4 days per month for 9 months, filming six episodes of Wheel of Fortune from 12 noon to 6pm. It amounts to a full year’s worth of programming for ABC." | todayilearned |
"TIL Medal of Honor recipient Edward Carter could speak five languages, fought in his first war at 15, and joined the the Spanish Civil War to fight fascists at 20 before eventually fighting in WW2. Despite his heroism in combat, he and all other black awardees would not be recognized until 1997." | todayilearned |
"TIL when deaf people with schizophrenia 'hear voices', they hallucinate hands communicating using sign language" | todayilearned |
"TIL that anyone who moves to Villas Las Estrellas, a settlement in Antarctica, must first have their appendix preemptively removed because the nearest hospital is over 600 miles away." | todayilearned |
"TIL that Michael Jackson removed "Dirty Diana" from his concert setlist in London for Princess Diana to be respectful, but she asked for him to keep it in the setlist as it was one of her personal favorites." | todayilearned |
"TIL, after U.S. President Garfield was shot, his doctors were so negligent and gave him such a bad infection that his assassin openly confessed at trial to the shooting, but argued that Garfield’s doctors had actually done the killing" | todayilearned |
"TIL a man who was paralyzed from a surfing accident neck injury was able to walk again from an experimental treatment. Stem cells from the man's own stomach fat were injected into his spinal cord to regenerate and repair the injury." | todayilearned |
"TIL A 3M adhesive tape plant accidentally created a force field of static electricity that was strong enough to prevent humans from passing through. A person near this "wall" was unable to turn, and so had to walk backwards to retreat from it." | todayilearned |
"TIL that Christopher Walken is one of only two actors (the other being Alec Baldwin) to have a standing offer from Lorne Michaels to host Saturday Night Live whenever his schedule permits. Thus far he has hosted the show 7 times, his most famous appearance being the "More Cowbell!" sketch." | todayilearned |
"TIL Shrek was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant"" | todayilearned |
"TIL Nikola Tesla once spent over $2,000 on an injured white pigeon. The amount includes building a device that comfortably supported her so her bones could heal. "I loved that pigeon as a man loves a woman, and she loved me. As long as I had her, there was a purpose to my life," he said of her." | todayilearned |
"TIL Theodore Roosevelt's 1880 undergraduate thesis at Harvard was titled: "The Practicability of Equalizing Men and Women before the Law" which argued for women's rights, including property ownership, and argued that women ought to keep their birth names upon marrying." | todayilearned |
"TIL a Chinese father hired a 'hitman' to kill his son's character in online games so that he would stop playing games and get himself a job." | todayilearned |
"TIL Queen Elizabeth II specifically asked to be in a James Bond skit with Daniel Craig for the Olympics, breaking royal protocol. When asked if she would like to say something she said, "Of course I must say something. After all, he is coming to rescue me."" | todayilearned |
"TIL that Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack are widely credited with helping end segregation in Las Vegas, by refusing to perform in venues that wouldn't allow blacks." | todayilearned |
"TIL car trunks got emergency release handles because a middle aged woman and her husband escaped being kidnapped and fought for it until it became a requirement" | todayilearned |
"TIL Freddie Mercury spent his last months recording as many vocals as he could for the rest of Queen to finish after his death" | todayilearned |
"TIL Phyllis from "The Office" would pay bills and do Christmas shopping online from the office computers in the background." | todayilearned |
"TIL the IRS still operates largely on mainframe computers running 60 year old code" | todayilearned |
"TIL Clyde Tombaugh, the man who discovered Pluto, has finally visited it, as his ashes are aboard the New Horizons spacecraft that completed a Pluto flyby in 2015." | todayilearned |
"TIL about Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian spy that solved his own murder case. He was poisoned with a cup of tea in a London hotel. Working with Scotland Yard detectives, as he lay dying, he traced the lethal substance to a former comrade in the Russian secret service" | todayilearned |
"TIL that during the Holocaust, Polish doctors Eugene Lazowski and Stanisław Matulewicz saved 8,000 Jews by creating a fake Typhus epidemic. The Germans quarantined the area instead of risking outbreaks by sending them to concentration camps." | todayilearned |
"TIL Stephen Hawking liked "The Theory Of Everything" so much that he allowed the filmmakers to use his trademarked computerized voice on it. He called the film "broadly true" and emailed the filmmakers that there were certain points when he thought he was watching himself, which left him tearful." | todayilearned |
"TIL in the 50-plus year history of the Japanese bullet train system, carrying over 5.3 billion passengers, there has been not a single passenger fatality or injury due to train accidents." | todayilearned |
"TIL that after her husband was diagnosed with testicular cancer Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg attended class and took notes for both of them, typed her husband's dictated papers and cared for their daughter and her sick husband—all while making the Harvard Law Review." | todayilearned |
"TIL that when the CEO of discount supermarket chain ALDI was kidnapped, he haggled about his ransom money and claimed the sum as a tax-deductable business expense in court after his release" | todayilearned |
"TIL the USSR expected to win the final of the 1957 Ice Hockey World Championships, held in Moscow, but lost to Sweden. The organizers did not have the Swedish national anthem ready for the medal ceremony, so the Swedish players sang a drinking song and it was broadcast over the PA system." | todayilearned |
"TIL about the Great Green Wall, an effort to plant trees to stop desertification in the Sahara that began in 2007. Ethiopia has planted over 5.5 billion seedling since." | todayilearned |
"TIL author H.P. Lovecraft was never able to support himself from his earnings as an author. His book "The Shadow Over Innsmouth", written one year before his death, sold a meagre 200 copies. He died in poverty at age 46." | todayilearned |
"TIL Classical Greece wasn't filled with pure white marble everything. The statues and ruins we see today were actually painted in all kinds of vivid colors that were just stripped bare back to their original white marble by time." | todayilearned |
"TIL That when Bill Paxton died, hundreds of storm chasers spelt out his initials BP across three states using GPS markers to honor him for his role as a storm chaser in the 90s movie Twister." | todayilearned |
"TIL that Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust" was not intended to be released as a single. They were later convinced to do so by Michael Jackson who had attended a Queen concert in Los Angeles and suggested it to Freddie Mercury backstage." | todayilearned |
"TIL A theme park in France employ ravens to clear the park off cigarette butts in return for a reward (bird food)." | todayilearned |
"TIL that to save the Hawaiian culture and people from disappearing, Kalākaua, the last king of the Hawaiian kingdom, went on a world tour in 1881, and travelled to Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and the United States, and he became the first reigning monarch to circumnavigate the globe." | todayilearned |
"TIL that J.K. Rowling wrote a real person into The Goblet of Fire. The girl was named Natalie McDonald, a Harry Potter fan who was dying of leukaemia while Rowling was still writing the book. You see her character as a first-year who dons the sorting hat and is sorted into Gryffindor." | todayilearned |
"TIL that despite selling 30 million albums and having 9 top ten hits, Creedence Clearwater Revival were only together for four years." | todayilearned |
"TIL that Robert Kearns, the inventor of intermittent windshield wipers, tried to sell his idea to the auto industry and was turned away. When they began showing up on new cars, he sued the manufacturers from the industry and won millions of dollars in settlements." | todayilearned |
"TIL in 1933, Amelia Earhart and Eleanor Roosevelt were at a White House event when they whimsically abandoned their guests for a joyride. Both took turns flying and Roosevelt later stated, "It does mark an epoch, doesn't it, when a girl in an evening dress and slippers can pilot a plane at night."" | todayilearned |
"TIL after the 2011 earthquake in Japan, members of the yakuza gathered supplies and gave food to the victims. Some even opened their offices to people who couldn't return home. Some people felt like their response was much quicker and efficient than that of the government." | todayilearned |
"TIL Hawaiian pizza was invented in Canada by a Greek immigrant, who was inspired by Chinese food to put a South American ingredient on an Italian dish, that went on to be most popular in Australia" | todayilearned |
"TIL that bears are considered by many wildlife biologists to be one of the most intelligent land animals of North America. They possess the largest and most convoluted brains relative to their size of any land mammal. In the animal kingdom, their intelligence compares with that of higher primates." | todayilearned |
"TIL The lack of an Oxford comma in the wording of a state law laying out what activities qualify a worker for overtime pay, more than 120 drivers for the Oakhurst Dairy became eligible for a multi-million settlement for unpaid overtime." | todayilearned |
"TIL A 2 year study showed that washing hands 5 times daily reduced incidence of respiratory infections by 45%." | todayilearned |
"TIL The average life span of a pet cat has risen from seven years in the early 1980s to fifteen years as of 2021." | todayilearned |
"TIL that in 1997 a poacher named Vladimir Markov shot and wounded a tiger and then stole a part of the tiger's kill. The injured tiger staked out Markov's cabin, waited 12-48 hours for Markov to come home and then proceeded to kill him and eat him." | todayilearned |
"TIL that if a pregnant woman has organ damage, the baby in her womb sends stem cells to help repair the organ." | todayilearned |
"TIL: That a Japanese ice cream company created a commercial to publicly apologize about needing to raise the price of their ice cream bars for the first time in 25 years from 60 yen to 70 yen" | todayilearned |
"TIL that veterinarians kill themselves at rates 2.5 to 3.5 times the general population, due in part to online trolling and threats from pet owners who blame them for the death of a pet, and easy access to lethal medicines" | todayilearned |
"TIL that Mister Rogers once used an egg timer and simply let it run for sixty seconds on a television broadcast—in order to demonstrate how long a minute is. Unlike most TV made for kids, "Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood" was deliberately slow and contemplative." | todayilearned |
"TIL a man was attacked for having a beard in 1830, then imprisoned for defending himself. He died in 1873, by which time beards were fashionable. His tombstone reads, "Persecuted for wearing the beard."" | todayilearned |
"TIL that in 1971, burglars broke into an FBI office by writing a note that said “Please don’t lock this door tonight” and plastering it onto the front door. It worked and they stole several files." | todayilearned |
"TIL of the "idiot plot". The term was popularized by film critic Roger Ebert, who defines it as "ny plot containing problems that would be solved instantly if all of the characters were not idiots"." | todayilearned |
"TIL an IT Director, fed up with sales calls where the caller lied to reach IT staff, said to transfer one such caller 'straight to hell' . This led to the creation of a special extension for such calls where horrible hold music and faked queue messages play on an endless loop to increase hold time." | todayilearned |
"TIL of a very rare condition called Anton syndrome, in which a person becomes blind however they are unaware of it and will deny it, as their brain generates (false) visual images so they continue to believe that they can see." | todayilearned |
"TIL, Calvin Klein's cologne 'Obsession' can draw big cats like Tigers, Jaguars etc from as far as half a mile, who then proceed to taking long sniffs and cuddling against the source, savouring the smell much longer than they savour even their meals" | todayilearned |
"TIL A Group Of Flat Earthers Spend $20,000 Trying To Prove Earth Is Flat, Accidentally Prove It's Round" | todayilearned |
"TIL George Lucas approved of Mel Brooks’ Star Wars parody Spaceballs and signed off on a fair use agreement. The only condition was that no Spaceballs merchandise would be made to compete with Star Wars merchandise. This is why there’s never been any Spaceballs figures, cereal, or flamethrower." | todayilearned |
"TIL that New Zealand author Janet Frame was falsely diagnosed as schizophrenic and was scheduled to be lobotomised. Several days before the operation, she won New Zealand's most prestigious literary prize, convincing doctors to cancel the procedure." | todayilearned |
"TIL that André the Giant grew so fast that his own parents didn't recognize him. He left home at 14 and returned at 19, having already become a professional wrestler. As he explained his career choice, they realized they had seen him wrestle on TV under his alias, without knowing it was their son." | todayilearned |
"TIL Out of all the species that ever lived throughout all of Earth’s history, only a fraction of a percent have fossilized. Even fewer are discovered by humans. Most of life’s history will be forever unknown" | todayilearned |
"TIL that Alan Alda met his wife of over 60 years at a dinner party when they were the only two guests who ate the rum cake after it fell on the kitchen floor." | todayilearned |
"TIL the production for Mork and Mindy had to hire a censor that spoke 4 languages to keep track of Robin Williams secretly trying to slip in swear words in other languages during filming of the show" | todayilearned |
"TIL that Charles Dickens’ novels were hugely popular even among the illiterate poor. They would pool their money to hire a reader, and then gather together to listen to the stories." | todayilearned |
"TIL many Chinese medical tourists who go to South Korea for inexpensive and high quality plastic surgery have difficulty re-entering China due to their passports photos not matching their new face post op." | todayilearned |
"TIL some Jewish males celebrate a second Bar Mitzvah at age 83, under the logic that the Torah states a normal lifespan is 70 years, thus an 83-year-old can be considered 13 in a second lifetime. This practice is becoming more common as people live longer, healthier lives" | todayilearned |
"TIL The guy who started Atari sold the company and used the money to start Chuck E. Cheese" | todayilearned |
"TIL that Johnny Cash’s guitar player died in 1968. Cash found himself at a show where the temporary replacement, Carl Perkins, couldn’t make it. An audience member asked Cash if he could fill in for the night, and he said yes. Bob Wootton then became Cash’s guitar player for the next 29 years" | todayilearned |
"TIL that most states require car manufacturers to sell through the dealers. Even if your order directly from the factory, the order must go through the dealer. This dealer distribution system adds around 30% to the price of the cars." | todayilearned |
"TIL if a beta male mandrill wins a fight, it physically morphs into an alpha male over time, gaining facial coloration, bigger testicles, and the ability to breed." | todayilearned |
"TIL 1-800-COLLECT was so popular in the 90s that AT&T launched a competing service, 1-800-Operator. However AT&T later discovered many people misspell Operator with 'er' instead of 'or' at the end, and that unfortunately, 1-800-COLLECT owned the misspelled number and had been taking their customers." | todayilearned |
"TIL since 2015, Sesame Street has been funded by HBO due to PBS funding issues" | todayilearned |
"TIL The creator of The Sims, Will Wright, was inspired to make the game after losing his home and most of his material possessions in a fire in 1997. Thinking about the value of material needs as he rebuilt his life gave him the idea of a game where players managed the life of a suburban household." | todayilearned |
"TIL In the Netherlands, if you die and have no next of kin, friends or family to attend your funeral, they will send a poet who shall read a custom poem for you at your funeral so that you won’t be alone that day. It was started by poet and artist F Staril and is named "The Lonely Funeral" project." | todayilearned |
"TIL: John Francis, an American environmentalist, decided to stop speaking for a day to learn to listen better to his opponents. He turned it into a 17-year vow of silence. During those 17 years, he went to school and even earned a PhD." | todayilearned |
"TIL that Jimmy Carter is the longest-lived president, the longest-retired president, the first president to live forty years after their inauguration, and the first to reach the age of 95." | todayilearned |
"TIL that physicist Nikola Tesla once paid an overdue hotel bill with a box containing a working model of his ‘death beam‘, warning employees never to open it because of the danger. They hid the box & when it was discovered years later & opened, found to contain old (harmless) electrial parts." | todayilearned |
"TIL that in Churchill, Manitoba, it is customary to leave car doors unlocked in order to provide other residents a quick escape should they come face-to-face with a polar bear." | todayilearned |
"TIL a Guatemalan boy saw soldiers come into his village and murder his parents along with the rest of the village, was adopted and raised in an abusive household by one of the men who massacred the villagers, and later gave testimony that sent the killer to prison with a 6,000 year sentence" | todayilearned |
"TIL in 1897, 3 Swedes attempted to be the first people to reach the North Pole. They travelled by hot air balloon but crashed after 65 hours. 33 years later, a ship discovered their camp, along with their dead bodies, journal, and camera. They'd survived for weeks by killing and eating polar bears." | todayilearned |
"TIL that the robbery of the Federal Reserve in Die Hard with a Vengeance is so plausible that the FBI actually questioned the screenwriter on how he had such intimate knowledge of the vaults." | todayilearned |
"TIL Getty Images, a company infamous for sending threatening letters requesting payment when their photos are used without permission, was sued for more than $1 billion in damages when they mistakenly demanded a “settlement payment” from a photographer for her own work." | todayilearned |
"TIL Kraft Foods introduced its boxed macaroni and cheese in 1937 when America was in the throes of the Great Depression with the promise that buyers could feed a family of four for 19 cents. Kraft sold 8 million boxes of its quick-and-easy macaroni and cheese the first year" | todayilearned |
"TIL three 13 year old girls submitted a script for "Tiny Toon Adventures". Producer Steven Spielberg was so impressed that he invited the girls to Hollywood to work on the episode and paid them $3,000. This later inspired a Simpsons episode where Bart and Lisa write an Itchy & Scratchy cartoon." | todayilearned |
"TIL that Daniel Radcliffe is a recovering alcoholic and would sometimes go to set for Harry Potter still drunk from the night before." | todayilearned |
"TIL During WW2 Joe Medicine Crow, a native American, completed all four feats required to be a war chief: touching an enemy without killing him, taking an enemy's weapon, leading a war party and stealing 50 horses from the SS, singing a Crow honour song as he rode away." | todayilearned |
"TIL that Paul McCartney, as a vegetarian and animal rights activist, only agreed to appear on The Simpsons if Lisa's decision to become a vegetarian in that episode was made permanent. He is literally the only reason Lisa is still a vegetarian." | todayilearned |
"TIL that Magnus Carlsen intentionally plays non-book "inaccuracies" during opening (moves he knows aren't the best), in order to force the game into a non-book position, so his opponents will have to think for themselves instead of going by memorized opening theory." | todayilearned |
"TIL it is 100% legal be to buried at sea in the USA. You basically wrap the body in a sheet with some weights, at least 3 miles from shore and throw it off the boat. The Navy even has a program to assist veterans of the armed services." | todayilearned |
"TIL that although Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture was written to include cannons firing and cathedral bells, synchronising them with an orchestra proved all but impossible. It wasn't until 1954 that composer Antal Doráti mixed a studio recording with cannons and bells, finally playing it as intended." | todayilearned |
"TIL when Cristiano Ronaldo was asked to donate his cleats to a 10-month-old kid who had a brain disorder, he instead gave $83k to fully pay for the surgery the child would have." | todayilearned |
"TIL that when Sultan Mohammed V of Morocco was commanded to round up all Moroccan Jews for relocation to Nazi concentration camps, he said "There are no Jews in Morocco. There are only Moroccan subjects." Not a single Moroccan Jew was deported or killed during WWII." | todayilearned |
"TIL that the details of the Manhattan Project were so secret that many workers had no idea why they did their jobs. A laundrywoman had a dedicated duty to "hold up an instrument and listen for a clicking noise" without knowing why. It was a Geiger counter testing the radiation levels of uniforms." | todayilearned |
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