Grab your thinking caps, dear Pandas, it’s time to expand our minds! It’s time for another loving rendition of ‘Today I Learned,’ a list of all the cool and interesting (and really surprising!) things that the people of the internet learned about the world recently.
From science to history to everything and anything in between and more, the TIL community over on Reddit has got it all. And with so many curious people in the world, the subreddit keeps on expanding, now closing on a whopping 26 million members. Need some more yummy facts about everything and anything? Check out Bored Panda’s latest lovingly-crafted TIL articles here and here, as well as here. Got some cool trivia tidbits to share with the rest of the class? You can tell us all about them in the comment section.
Learning new things isn’t as easy as we’d like as we grow up. But it’s far from impossible! All it takes a spark of curiosity and the willingness to be open-minded and humble.
#1
TIL about BACA, a biker gang that will defend kids who were abused or bullied, give them their own vest, take them the school, and will even guard a house 24/7 to make sure the kid can sleep
Image source: Met76, Vanessa Serpas
#2
TIL a bus driver in Paris kicked all the passengers out when they refused to make space for a wheelchair bound man
Image source: __aks, moovitapp
#3
TIL Queen Elizabeth once hid in a bush with her corgis to avoid talking to Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife.
Image source: Fun_Wonder_4114, Bill Ingalls
#4
TIL Gorillas hum happy songs when they eat. “And if it’s their favourite food, they sing louder.”
Image source: onlyupliftingcomment, Mad Ball
#5
TIL Stephen King sells the rights to some of his short stories for just $1, allowing aspiring filmmakers and students to adapt them into movies. This arrangement is known as the Dollar Baby.
Image source: killHACKS, Stephanie Lawton
#6
TIL a woman named Frances Perkins was outside the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory during the fire and saw dozens of people jump to their deaths due to unsafe work conditions. She went on to become the first female Secretary of Labor and founded the Factory Investigating Commission to improve work safety
Image source: PM_me_no_clothes_pic, Library of Congress
#7
TIL Gillian Lynne did so badly in school teachers thought she had a learning disorder & her mom took her to a doctor. Lynne began dancing to his radio; the doctor said: She’s not disordered, she’s a dancer; put her in dance school. Lynne became a world-renowned dancer & music theater choreographer.
Image source: TheRealLuckyBlackCat, ItzKingFran123
#8
TIL before any details of Pixar’s ‘Soul’ were public, a Black chauffeur told Kemp Powers (the film’s co-writer & co-director) that he knew Pixar was making a Black movie because he had never driven so many Black people to Pixar before.
Image source: CocaTrooper42, pixar
#9
TIL that Utah’s Great Salt Lake used to be the home of a single flamingo named Pink Floyd, who escaped from the zoo and would be seen wintering in Utah socializing with seagulls
Image source: TheSpecksynder, Manuel Ramos Inostroza
#10
TIL Pope Benedict XVI resigned in 2013, but announced it in Latin. One reporter got the scoop and broke the story because she understood Latin. Most other reporters waited for official translations.
Image source: amansaggu26, Mangouste35
#11
TIL that the Quran references Jesus’s mother Mary 70 times and holds her in very high regard, identifying her as the greatest of all women
Image source: a2soup, Giovanni Battista Salvi da Sassoferrato
#12
TIL that three german students got sued by their alma mater for 10,000€ because they graduated “too fast”. They completed their bachelors and masters degree within 4 instead of 11 semesters by attending different lectures and sharing notes. Then they founded a ghostwriting agency!
Image source: Markusdo, Pixabay
#13
TIL That rats can be trained to detect a chemical compound within explosives, meaning they ignore scrap metal and can search for mines more quickly. Also, an African giant pouched rat named Magawa has been awarded a prestigious gold medal for his work detecting land mines.
Image source: Hebdomero, pete beard
#14
TIL that when you eat pineapple and your tongue begins to hurt it is due to the fact that the pineapple is eating you back thanks to bromelain.
Image source: heyysooos, Gabriel Yuji
#15
TIL on several late 60’s recordings, prominent jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman used his 10-year-old son to play drums, though he could have employed high-profile adult jazz drummers. He prized the child’s joyful child musical curiosity over a more technically skilled adult
Image source: GregJamesDahlen, Frank Schindelbeck
#16
TIL in 2018 a French historical theme park named Puy du Fou trained six Rooks, a member of the crow family, to pick up cigarette butts and trash. When one of them takes a piece of trash to a special box the device dispenses bird food
Image source: f_GOD, Andreas Trepte
#17
TIL That in the late 1780’s, an Irishman met an impressive performing bear while travelling France. When the bears owner prodded him with a stick, the bear shouted something in Irish, which led to the discovery that the performing bear was actually another Irishman who had been sown into the suit.
Image source: CooKeeeeeeee, Sharon Mollerus
#18
TIL that rats left unaided in water will drown in a few minutes because they feel hopeless, but if they know there is hope of being rescued they will last for days.
Image source: grpagrati, Tambako The Jaguar
#19
TIL an Intern at NASA once stole a safe full of moon rocks, sprinkled them on a hotel bed, and had sex with his girlfriend on top of them. He was sentenced to 8 years
Image source: geek_fest, Wknight94
#20
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
Image source: geekteam6, Tima Miroshnichenko
#21
TIL that barns are red because farmers made their own sealant using linseed oil and rust. The rust protects the wood from algae and fungal growth but also colors the mixture red.
Image source: EtOHMartini, Sonja
#22
TIL For millennia, Europeans did not know where birds went in Winter time. The mystery was partly solved in 1822, when a German hunter shot down a stork. The stork had a 80cm long Central African spear impaled in its neck. This provided the first evidence that they migrated to Africa.
Image source: amansaggu26, Thomas Bresson
#23
TIL that Thomas Edison proposed to his future wife in morse code, she accepted in the same way
Image source: FnordDesiato, Louis Bachrach
#24
Today I learned IKEA is an acronym which stands for Ingvar Kamprad Elmtaryd Agunnaryd, which is the founder’s name, farm where he grew up, and hometown.
#25
TIL about the mysterious worldwide epidemic of Encephalitis lethargica. The disease attacks the brain, leaving some victims in a statue-like condition, speechless and motionless. Between 1915 and 1926, 500,000 dead or incapacitated from it. It disappeared as mysteriously as it came in to the world.
Image source: Shibuya-Overlord, Wellcome Library
#26
TIL just before lethal hypothermia, a person will undress themselves because they perceive themselves to be burning up when indeed they’re freezing (paradoxical undressing). Consequently people frozen to death are often found naked and misidentified as a victim of a violent crime.
Image source: clingyfungus, Fort Drum & 10th Mountain Division (LI)
#27
TIL the term “crimes against humanity” was first used to describe the atrocities committed by Leopold the 2nd of Belgium in the Congo Free State, a regime so brutal that the mercenaries hired by Leopold had to show a human hand for every bullet they used to prove the bullet wasnt used for hunting.
Image source: adr826, Wikimedia Commons
#28
TIL that the Venus flytrap naturally grows in very few areas in the Carolinas, so park rangers have to keep most of their grow sites a secret to keep them safe from poachers.
Image source: Scruffy_Nerf_Hoarder, Blondinrikard Fröberg
#29
TIL In 1980 a dingo ate an Australian couple’s baby while camping, causing the mother to sentenced to life in prison for murder. Three years later, the babies clothes were found near a dingo lair.
Image source: Longboarding-Is-Life, Peripitus
#30
TIL in 1998, a married couple was left behind during a diving trip to the Great Barrier Reef. Two days passed before anyone realized what had happened. Despite a 5-day search, the couple was never found. A dive slate was later recovered which read “… rescue us before we die…”
Image source: fleece_pants, Jan
#31
TIL the Adamites were a 2nd century Christian sect that sought to re-create the innocence of the Garden of Eden. To this end they called their church “Paradise”, practiced nudism, rejected marriage and claimed they could do whatever they wanted because they had no knowledge of good/evil.
Image source: Ok-Needleworker-8876, Wikimedia Commons
#32
TIL despite modern connotations of death as evil, the Greek god Hades was actually more altruistically inclined. Very few individual aspects of his personality were recorded, as Greeks refrained from giving him much thought to avoid attracting his attention.
Image source: Myrandall, Carole Raddato
#33
TIL that “Jazz” is statistically the hardest word to guess in hangman. It has to do with it being a short word, having only one vowel, and using “j” and “z”—letters that people rarely guess in hangman.
Image source: whisk_of_power, McGeddon
#34
TIL that “ringworm” is a fungal infection and no actual worms are involved
#35
TIL that the Bermuda triangle isn’t statistically more dangerous than almost any other place on the world’s oceans per capita, the traffic there is just much higher.
Image source: SnooPaintings4445, Chris F
#36
TIL after their characters unsuccessfully flirted in Jurassic Park, Jeff Goldblum and Laura Dern actually dated and got engaged
Image source: GirthWindNFire, Georges Biard
#37
TIL In 2019, Pope Francis approved changing the lord’s prayer. The phrase “lead us not into temptation” changed to “do not let us fall into temptation”. He said the original was a bad translation because it suggested God caused the temptation.
Image source: amansaggu26, Jeffrey Bruno
#38
TIL that Michael Jackson suffered from severe insomnia and did not get any real sleep for 60 days prior to his death. Instead, his personal doctor had been putting him under general anestheisa every night.
Image source: a2soup, Constru-centro
#39
TIL R.E.M. singer Michael Stipe nearly died of scarlet fever in 1962, of hypothermia in 1974, and of a lightning strike in 1986.
Image source: electricmaster23, kris krüg
#40
TIL that Sid Meier (of Sid Meier’s Civilization and Sid Meier’s Pirates!) began placing his name in the title of his games because of a suggestion made by Robin Williams in the 1980’s
Image source: Hammy_Sagar, Official GDC
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