36 'Today I Learned' Facts and Trivia Tidbits To Make Us Seem Smarter

An eye-opening collection of odd facts and interesting tidbits that can be found posted on the subreddit r/todayIlearned.

By Nathan Johnson

Published 4 months ago in Ftw

Our world is an amazing place with a long and storied history, full of both good and bad. Let's take a virtual field trip through time with this batch of interesting and intriguing photos and the stories behind them.

1
TIL firefighters that responded to last year's fire at Notre Dame knew which works of art to rescue and in which order following a protocol developed for such a disaster.

2
TIL that Suzanne Somers was fired from 'Three’s Company' for asking for equal pay with her male co-star, John Ritter, who was earning five times her salary.

3
TIL that A man named Göran Kropp from Sweden rode his bicycle to Nepal, climbed Mount Everest alone without Sherpas or bottled oxygen, then cycled back to Sweden again.
4
TIL Frank Sinatra died the night of Seinfeld's finale and his ambulance made it to the hospital in record time because traffic was so light due to everyone watching the show.

5
TIL, That since domestication, dogs' eyes have changed. Dogs now have eye muscles that make them more expressive and infant-like. These same muscles are absent in wolves, their closest relative.
6
TIL that paper books still outsells e-books by a huge margin, even among young people.
7
TIL according to Paul McCartney there is no mystery to who broke up the Beatles. John Lennon did. He called a meeting and said he was leaving the band.

8
TIL that when filming the TV series "The Mandalorian" in 2019, the crew ran out of Stormtrooper costumes, so they reached out to the local branch of a Star Wars fan organisation, whose members came to join the filming in their own home-made Stormtrooper costumes
9
TIL: A research that analyzed the birthdays of all 20 million husbands and wives in England and Wales failed to reveal any evidence of attraction or compatibility between people of particular star signs.
10
TIL after losing her position in her university's anatomy department in 1938, Rita Levi-Montalcini set up a laboratory in her bedroom and studied the growth of nerve fibers in chicken embryos. This work led to her discovery of nerve growth factor, for which she was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1986.

11
TIL Curry was introduced to Japan by the British. The British brought curry from India back to Britain and introduced it to Japan after it ended its policy of self-isolation. Curry in Japan is categorized as a Western dish
12
TIL David Bowie was punched in the left eye as a teenager, leaving it permanently dilated. He later thanked his friend, George Underwood, for doing so, saying it gave him "a kind of mystique." This mystique helped enhance some of Bowie's most iconic images.
13
TIL Rome has major struggles with expanding the subway system in the city because diggers keep running into major archaeological finds. The Metro C expansion has been in the works for the past 40 years and has unearthed Hadrian's Athenaeum, a military complex, and an amphitheater.

14
TIL Honeybee venom rapidly kills aggressive breast cancer cells and when the venom's main component is combined with existing chemotherapy drugs, it is extremely efficient at reducing tumour growth in mice.
15
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."
16
TIL That Sri Lanka only became an island in 1480, when a cyclone destroyed the land bridge connecting it to mainland India.

17
TIL in 1896, a bubоnіc plаgue epіdеmic struck Bombay, and the government asked Waldemar Haffkine, developer of the first chоlera vаccіne, to help. After 3 months of persistent work (1 assistant had a nervous breakdown and 2 others quit), a vаccіne was ready, with Haffkine tеsting it on himself first
18
TIL that Kyrgyzstan is more distant from the ocean than any other nation. At a minimum of 1620 miles from any ocean, it is the most land-locked state in the world
19
TIL that Jurassic Park's visual effects were so groundbreaking to filmmakers that it inspired Peter Jackson to begin work on Lord of the Rings, George Lucas to start on the Star Wars prequels, and Stanley Kubrick to invest in his pet project, A.I (Artificial Intelligence). Jurassic Park (film)

20
TIL: Tim Burton did not direct "Tim Burton's A Nightmare Before Christmas." Henry Selick, director of "James and the Giant Peach" and "Coraline," carried out the task, due to Burton having prior commitments to "Batman Returns."
21
TIL that when Stephen Hawking was diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) in 1963, doctors predicted he had about 2 and a half years to live. Fortunately, the disease progressed much slower that the doctors expected, and Hawking lived up to 76 years before dying in March 14, 2018.
22
TIL during the winter, people spend more time indoors with the windows sealed, so they are more likely to breathe the same air as someone who has the flu and thus contract the virus.Days are shorter during the winter, and lack of sunlight leads to low levels of vitamin D decreasing immunity to virus

23
TIL Ketamine was given to boys trapped in a cave to keep them unconscious & to prevent them from panicking during their six day rescue
24
TIL that in September 1945 Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett defied US restrictions and snuck into Hiroshima by train. Burchett was the first to tell the world about the effects of radiation on the victims of the bombing, which the US denied both before and after his story was published.
25
TIL that the Soviets realised that the Americans and British were developing an atomic bomb when they noticed that Western scientists had ceased publishing papers on nuclear science. Correctly guessing that nuclear science had been made a state secret, they began their own program

26
TIL: there are otter gangs in Singapore who fight for territories. It is well followed by the locals and the press. Each gangs has names and reputations.
27
TIL a South African farmer rescued a baby hippo from a flood and gave it a home. The farmer fed him, brushed his teeth and helped him. The farmer was found dead with severe bite marks from the hippo and his body submerged in the river where he rescued the hippo 6 years earlier
28
TIL Macy's Department Store declined to be featured in the movie "Elf" because they didn't like the idea that there was a fake Santa working there and felt it would blow the illusion for kids.

29
TIL in 1749 a stage show was advertised a where a man would squeeze his body into a wine bottle. It was a bet between the Duke of Portland and the Earl of Chesterfield that they could advertise something impossible and get fools to pay for it. The sold out theatre rioted when no performer showed up.
30
TIL Elvis's autopsy revealed morphine, Demerol, chlorpheniramine, Placidyl, Valium, codeine, Ethinamate, quaaludes; an unidentified barbiturate, diazepam, Amytal, Nembutal, Carbrital, Sinutab, Elavil, Avenal, and Valmid.
31
TIL in 1935, in a newly built Sydney aquarium, a tiger shark vomited a human arm that belonged to a man that went missing recently, which sparked a murder mystery when it was discovered the arm was severed with a knife instead of being bitten off.

32
TIL that In 2018, A hacker broke into people’s routers (100,000 of them) and patched their vulnerabilities up so that they couldn’t be abused by other hackers.
33
TIL: Jim Carey used to get to do stand up in his 7th grade class. He used humor to fit in and his teacher made a deal with him - if he was quiet all day he would get 15 minutes at the end of class where he did stand up using material from life, the class, or doing impressions of faculty members.
34
TIL African elephants often bury dead or sleeping humans or aid them when they are hurt. One woman fell asleep under a tree and woke to find an elephant standing over her gently touching her. As other elephants arrived they buried her under branches. She was found the next morning unharmed.

35
TIL James Earl Jones decided to go uncredited for his role of voicing Darth Vader because he considered David Prowse’s performance inside the Vader costume to be the more defining of the two performances.
36
TIL Tchaikovsky had a patron who gave him enough money to quit his job and become a full-time composer, on the condition that they never meet in person.
37
TIL a field of seagrass converts carbon dioxide to oxygen at over 8x the rate of a forest the same size.