Today I Learned 🎓

30 Oct 2024 12:49

TIL Beverly Hills was planned as an all-white community with legal agreements preventing non-whites from owning or renting property. These laws also prevented Jewish people from doing the same. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

30 Oct 2024 08:49

TIL that practicing gratitude daily can rewire your brain, boosting happiness and reducing stress by increasing dopamine and serotonin levels. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

30 Oct 2024 05:49

TIL that the birds we call Penguins today are not actually penguins at all but another species of bird that was named after them because of their looks and their are no true penguins alive today. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

30 Oct 2024 04:49

TIL Saddam Hussein's son Uday murdered his bodyguard at a party in front of horrified guests [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

30 Oct 2024 02:49

TIL of "Ardi" the fossilized skeletal remains of a human-like female anthropoid discovered in 1994. It is more than a million years older and more complete than "Lucy." It's discovery stunned scientists and refuted many core theories of human evolution. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

29 Oct 2024 23:49

TIL Nic Cage hired an alcoholic to follow him around so he could emulate his behaviour for Leaving Las Vegas.  [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

29 Oct 2024 22:49

TIL the National Covid Memorial Wall is a 500 meter wall created in 2020 along the Thames in London to mark the lives lost to Covid in the U.K. It has more than 240,000 individually hand-painted red hearts, each representing a victim. Many hearts have messages left by the bereaved or by volunteers. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

29 Oct 2024 20:49

TIL About The Axeman of New Orlean's, a serial killer who attacked 12 people with an axe and was never caught. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

29 Oct 2024 17:49

TIL the "Redwood of the East" - a 100ft-tall tree that once covered 25% of Eastern US forests, produced tons of food, and built America's industrial backbone - lost 99.9% of its population to a catastrophic blight. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

29 Oct 2024 16:49

TIL that flat-faced dog breeds like pugs and bulldogs suffer from a condition called "brachycephalic syndrome", which causes significant respiratory issues due to their compressed skull structure. This trait is bred purely for appearance but can result in chronic breathing problems and even death. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

29 Oct 2024 14:49

TIL that Clement Vallandigham was a lawyer who accidentally shot himself demonstrating how someone could accidentally shoot themself [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

29 Oct 2024 10:49

TIL that over 90% of all currency (euros) in circulation in Spain have trace amounts of cocaine [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

29 Oct 2024 07:49

TIL a Giffen good is a product that people consume more of as the price rises and vice versa, violating the law of demand. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

29 Oct 2024 05:49

TIL Joseph Goebbels seriously considered becoming a Catholic priest. He was aided in his earlier studies by a scholarship from the Albertus Magnus Society; Mangus was a German Dominican friar and Catholic Saint [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

29 Oct 2024 05:49

TIL that Goku's power level wasn't originally over 9000. It was originally over 8000, and there was a change made in the English Dub. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

30 Oct 2024 11:49

TIL: The Środa Treasure hoard was discovered in 1985 while building the foundation of a phone booth. The government seized 3000 coins. Years later, a bigger find was uncovered, however this time most of the find was taken before the authorities arrived. A criminal investigation was launched. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

30 Oct 2024 06:49

TIL that scientists gave a bunch of coked up monkeys amphetamines to see if they would stop ‘choosing’ cocaine [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

30 Oct 2024 04:49

TIL that Ray Bradbury wrote "The Halloween Tree" (1972) as a result of being disappointed after watching "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" - due to what he believed was the television special's lackluster depiction of Halloween [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

30 Oct 2024 03:49

TIL that Keanu Reeves has been secretly funding children's hospitals for years. He reportedly created a private foundation that aids children’s hospitals and cancer research without associating his name with it. "I don't like to attach my name to it, I just let the foundation do what it does." [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

30 Oct 2024 01:49

TIL there is a whale known as the 52-hertz whale (also known as 52 Blue) of an unidentified species that has never been sighted, but has been heard and known to exist since the late 1980s. There was also a feature length documentary about it that Leonardo DiCaprio was an executive producer for. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

29 Oct 2024 23:49

TIL I learned that in 2012 a man sued Mountain Dew for finding a mouse in a can. They defended themselves by arguing that if it was in the can for 15 months, the mouse would have dissolved. The case was settled. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

29 Oct 2024 21:50

TIL that the Six Flags theme parks are named after the six flags that flew over Texas including the confederate flag, the American flag, the Spanish flag, the Mexican flag, the French flag, and the Republic of Texas flag. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

29 Oct 2024 18:49

TIL that grunion fish have unusual mating habits. The females will burrow tail-first into the sand up to their necks so that only their heads stick out. Then a bunch of males will squirt their sperm onto their heads. The sperm trickles down their bodies to reach the eggs below them. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

29 Oct 2024 17:49

TIL that sloths can starve to death on a full stomach [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

29 Oct 2024 15:49

TIL that Natalie Portman has had papers published in two scientific journals. While at Harvard, she co-authored a study called “Frontal Lobe Activation during Object Permanence: Data from Near-Infrared Spectroscopy.” [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

29 Oct 2024 13:49

TIL that there were works on metro 2033 movie, but because director wanted to set the actions in Washington instead of Moscow, Glukhovskiy cancelled the movie. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

29 Oct 2024 09:49

TIL about Helios Flight 522. An engineer failed to set the pressurization system back to auto from manual, causing most (except 2 flight attendants) to lose consciousness. The auto-pilot reached Greece and stayed in a holding pattern until they ran out of fuel and crashed, killing all 121 onboard. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

29 Oct 2024 06:49

TIL: There was a chess controversy in India in 2021 during a charity match between billionaire Nikhil Kamath and a GM. It was revealed the billionaire cheated by hiring several chess experts and used computers to make perfect moves. He owned a stock brokerage [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

29 Oct 2024 05:49

TIL that Ulysses S Grant was supposed to attend the play in which Abraham Lincoln was assassinated. John Wilkes Booth had also planned to assassinate Grant. However, at the last minute Grant decided to go to New Jersey to visit his children instead of attending the play. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

29 Oct 2024 03:49

TIL, immediately after WWII, the U.S Government took 1,600 Nazi scientists back to the U.S. This secret operation was called “Operation Paperclip”. Many of these ex-Nazis scientists went to work for NASA. The most famous ex-Nazi scientist was Wernher von Braun. [Source]