Today I Learned 🎓

11 March 2026 22:49

TIL that Brittany, the region at the northwestern tip of France, has a Celtic culture distinct from the rest of France with their own Brythonic language. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

11 March 2026 19:49

TIL tea leaves have ~4% caffeine vs coffee beans at 0.9-2.6%. But coffee is brewed hotter and with more beans, so a cup of coffee still packs more caffeine than a cup of tea. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

11 March 2026 18:49

TIL that Sheb Wooley, famous for singing The Purple People Eater and voicing the Wilhelm Scream, also taught Roger Miller how to play guitar. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

11 March 2026 17:49

TIL that during the filming of Apocalypse Now (1979), lead actor Martin Sheen had a near fatal heart attack. This led to his brother, Joe Estevez, being a stand in for several scenes, as well as doing the voiceover narration for the film as he sounded nearly identical to his brother Martin [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

11 March 2026 16:49

TIL that During the French Revolution, Louis XVI ordered the arrest of a judge named D'Epremesnil. When the arresting officers came to the Palais de Justice, they did not know D'Epremesnil by sight, so all the judges stood up and cried "We are all D'Epremesnil!". No arrests were made that day. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

11 March 2026 14:49

TIL the modern flush toilet was popularized by English businessman and plumber named Thomas Crapper. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

11 March 2026 11:49

TIL that when bilingual people switch languages mid-sentence, their brain doesn't even notice the switch. NYU researchers found that the brain uses the same mechanism to combine words regardless of whether they come from one language or two, meaning code-switching is neurologically seamless. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

11 March 2026 08:49

TIL about Jan Baalsrud. A Norwegian Commando who evaded German capture by swimming in arctic waters, was buried by an avalanche, hid in a cave, and amputated several of his own frostbitten toes with a knife, and was dragged on a stretcher to safety by villagers. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

11 March 2026 04:49

TIL that General Omar Bradley commanded the Twelfth United States Army Group after the Allied Invasion of Europe. The group was the largest body of American soldiers to ever serve under a single commander with 1.3 million military personnel. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

11 March 2026 02:49

TIL that in 2025 a mini dachshund named Valerie was found alive after 529 days in the Australian wilderness. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

11 March 2026 00:49

TIL Single mothers spend less time on housework and get more sleep than married mothers [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

10 March 2026 23:49

TIL that New Nissan Stadium, future home of the NFL’s Tennessee Titans, costs $2.1 billion dollars & is being constructed using $1.26 billion dollars of public funds. This makes it the largest allocation of Stadium Subsidy funds to a sports venue in U.S. history. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

10 March 2026 19:49

TIL the eruption from a Coke and Mentos geyser isn't caused by a chemical reaction, but rather a physical one. The surface of the Mento has millions of cavities which serve as nucleation sites for carbon dioxide to desaturate from. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

10 March 2026 18:49

TIL - The spray from your mouth when yawning is likely due to a phenomenon called "gleeking," which is the involuntary ejection of saliva from the sublingual glands under your tongue. This can happen when the muscles in your mouth contract during yawning, creating a stream of salia. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

10 March 2026 15:49

TIL about "headspin hole", a common scalp injury in breakdancers, caused by years of performing headspins. The repeated friction causes a cone-shaped "breakdance bulge" to form. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

11 March 2026 20:49

TIL Mississippi has more than 5 times as many fatal motor vehicle crashes (24.9 per 100,000 people) than Massachusetts(4.9). [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

11 March 2026 19:49

TIL that the person in charge of the Kamikaze defence of Okinawa, Admiral Matome Ugaki, flew the last Kamikaze flight himself. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

11 March 2026 18:49

TIL in 2013, "Thrift Shop" by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis was able, as an independent song, to reach #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart without a major record label. It was only the second independent song to reach #1 in history at the time. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

11 March 2026 17:49

TIL the botched restoration nicknamed "Monkey Christ" was deemed more culturally relevant than the original painting and preserved as-is. Tens of thousands of tourists visit the Spanish town of Borja every year to see it, and the restorer became a local celebrity until her passing in late 2025. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

11 March 2026 15:49

TIL Americans streamed 57 billion minutes of The Office in 2020, 45% more than the second-place show Grey's Anatomy [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

11 March 2026 13:49

TIL after barely surviving the splashdown of the Liberty Bell 7, NASA astronaut Gus Grissom jokingly named the spacecraft for his next mission "Molly Brown" after the Broadway show "The Unsinkable Molly Brown". When NASA asked him to come up with a different name, he offered "Titanic". [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

11 March 2026 10:49

TIL that economists have a worse track record of having a correct prediction than random chance [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

11 March 2026 05:49

TIL An African American Musician, Wary of Racism, Pretended to Be Indian, And Received Nationwide Fame. He Maintained This False Identity For The Rest Of His Life. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

11 March 2026 03:49

TIL the plane crash that killed John F Kennedy Jr, his wife, and her sister was caused by “spatial disorientation”. Weather conditions were poor that night & Kennedy was not qualified to fly at night under instrument conditions. He did not request a weather briefing nor did he file a flight plan. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

11 March 2026 00:49

TIL that 45 years ago, Saudi Arabia built a 1,200-kilometer oil pipeline from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea, just in case the Strait of Hormuz ever got blocked [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

10 March 2026 23:49

TIL the first commercial film to feature a woman, the 21-second Carmencita (1894), also became the first film ever banned in the United States. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

10 March 2026 22:49

TIL: In 1876, Mary Lincoln thanked friends who helped free her from an asylum by giving them Abraham Lincoln’s handwritten note: “As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy." [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

10 March 2026 18:49

TIL Illinois school worker Vera Liddell was sentenced to nine years in prison for stealing $1.5M worth of chicken wings [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

10 March 2026 17:49

TIL the Drake Equation—the famous formula used to estimate the number of active civilizations in our galaxy—was never intended to be a "solution." Frank Drake originally wrote it in 1961 simply as an organizational agenda for the world's first SETI meeting. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

10 March 2026 13:49

TIL that to prove the idea that Clark Kent wearing glasses was enough to hide the fact that he is Superman, Henry Cavill, who played Superman in the 2016 film "Batman v Superman", walked around Times Square wearing a Superman shirt in 2016, and no one seemed to notice him. [Source]