They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but what about pandas? We believe that, regardless of your age, you can always learn something new. Just ask the members of Reddit’s ‘Today I Learned’ community! This group, which has an impressive 31 million members, is a wealth of information that’s constantly changing and updating, so below, we’ve gathered some of our favorite recent posts from TIL.
Keep reading to also find an interview with Alison Winfield-Chislett, founder and director of The Goodlife Centre in the UK, and be sure to share the tidbits of information you find most fascinating with your friends. I’m sure they’d like to learn more about why dishwashers were invented and why there are hundreds of raccoons wreaking havoc in Japan!
#1
TIL about Don Ritchie, an Australian who intervened and prevented at least 180 suicide attempts at a notable suicide destination called The Gap. He lived nearby and would approach and ask “Can I help you in some way?”
Image source: PRSouthern, Kurosi
#2
TIL One of the largest charitable donations made by a lottery winner came from a man in Canada. Two years after his wife died from cancer, Tom Crist won the lotto and donated everything to organizations fighting the disease. Canada doesn’t tax winnings, so Crist donated $40 million.
Image source: theotherbogart, Waldemar
#3
TIL in 1952, Jimmy Carter led a team of nuclear scientists in disassembling a Canadian nuclear reactor undergoing meltdown. To accomplish this, Carter, alongside other American military personnel, personally lowered himself into the reactor to disassemble it by hand.
Image source: JJKingwolf, Patrick McGarvey
#4
TIL of castaway huts (or depots) which are deliberately placed on isolated islands by governments. They contain supplies and tools which can help people who become stranded there. Most were built by the New Zealand government in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Image source: bermuda__, LawrieM
#5
TIL the ancient Nazca got water in the middle of the desert through an engineered series of 46 aqueducts running 12 m underground. They were built around 200-500 AD, and 32 of them are still used by local farmers today.
Image source: PianoCharged, Diego Delso
#6
TIL about Josephine Cochrane, who invented the dishwasher because she was fed up of China breaking whilst being hand washed.
Image source: blaikes, kidsdiscover.com
#7
TIL by passing a law requiring pharmacies to be owned by a licensed pharmacist, North Dakota has essentially done away with corporate chain pharmacies. Corporations that own pharmacies must be majority owned by licensed pharmacists.
Image source: Cjustinstockton, Nathaniel Yeo
#8
TIL that mature bull elephants play a pivotal role in elephant society. The absence of mature bulls creates juvenile delinquency in younger bulls, who will soon enter musth. When mature bulls were introduced into areas with a high concentration of delinquents, they soon put a stop to this behavior.
Image source: TheGuyNoOneSees, Roger Brown
#9
TIL of Movile Cave, which has been completely sealed off from the outside world for 5.5 million years and evolved dozens of animal species found nowhere else, sustained only by toxic chemicals in the air and water, not photosynthesis.
Image source: Cherimoose, kiarayew.com
#10
TIL Roman concrete structures such as the Pantheon and aqueducts are ultra durable because of lime clasts. While many modern concrete structures crumble after a few decades, Roman concrete has self-healing functionality from lime clasts which allow their structures to survive millennia.
Image source: The_Ry_Ry, Bernard Gagnon
#11
TIL in 1993 Mattel’s Barbie division accidentally released a Gay Ken doll. Despite being quickly recalled, it remains the best selling Ken doll of all time.
Image source: Ike_Arumba, Cyle Suesz for In The Know
#12
TIL that in 2014, Diana Nyad became the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida without using a shark cage. She endured a 104-mile swim through jellyfish and shark-infested waters, taking approximately 53 hours. Amazingly, she was 64 years old when she made this swim.
Image source: navigation007
#13
TIL of Dr. Jochem Hoyer, a German transplantation surgeon who argued in favour of altruistic organ donations. After a colleague criticized him for praising “living donors as long as it is NOT you who has to donate” Hoyer donated a kidney to an unknown stranger to make a quote “very strong statement”.
Image source: NewAccountEachYear
#14
TIL in 1974 the band Ace had their only hit, How Long (has this been going on). The song is not about a cheating girlfriend – it’s about the band’s bass player, who was moonlighting with another band.
Image source: edfitz83, discogs.com
#15
TIL that Nikola Tesla once worked for Thomas Edison but left due to a disagreement over payment for his work on improving Edison’s DC power systems. Tesla went on to develop AC power systems, which became the basis for modern electrical grids.
Image source: Yolo0o, Unknown author
#16
TIL A slave couple escaped to the North in 1848 by disguising her, a light-skinned black woman, as his owner, and him, darker-skinned, as her valet. She was illiterate at the time, so they put her arm in a sling against signatures and pretended she was sick. An acquaintance nearly recognized them.
Image source: nakedsamurai
#17
TIL that scientists created a 60 year long experiment in Siberia, selectively breeding wild foxes who showed friendly traits. 40 generations later they were as friendly as dogs!
Image source: TryingTruly
#18
TIL Impressed with his energy and ability to do the splits, the owner of the Oakland A’s hired an 11-year old named Stanley Burrell as a batboy and personal play-by-play announcer. A’s player Reggie Jackson gave the kid a nickname, Hammer, who would later become MC Hammer.
Image source: theotherbogart
#19
TIL Sperm whales use babysitters. Sperm whale youths cannot dive as deep as their mothers so when the mother needs to forage in the deep the youth is kept safe by swimming with other adult whales.
Image source: jamescookenotthatone, 7inchs
#20
TIL A repairman wanted to get out of work early and intentionally started a fire, causing $700,000,000 in damages to the USS Miami submarine.
Image source: ElJamoquio, Official U.S. Navy Page
#21
TIL Robin Williams improv was so good in FernGully the director tripled his character’s screen time for the final cut.
Image source: famous_antelope69
#22
TIL that we start forgetting early childhood memories at around age 7.
Image source: Lupercali, Pixabay
#23
TIL Japan has become infested with North American raccoons after an anime based on the book Rascal aired in 1977 and caused thousands of raccoons to be imported as pets only to be released into the wild.
Image source: Unleashtheducks, Сергей Игнатьев
#24
TIL the Myers-Briggs has no scientific basis whatsoever.
Image source: ThreadbareAdjustment, Eric E Castro
#25
TIL 70% of people in the world do not use toilet paper.
Image source: mimino99, Vlada Karpovich
#26
TIL that bioluminescence in fireflies is nearly 100 percent efficient, meaning little energy is wasted to produce their light.
Image source: hsblhsn
#27
TIL that the actor who played Darth Vader, David Prowse, was banned from attending official Star Wars events because he leaked too many plot details.
Image source: Someperson404
#28
TIL the crews of Apollo 11, 12, and 14 had to spend 3 weeks in quarantine after returning to Earth because of the possibility that they might spread contagions from the moon.
Image source: BlueHarvestJ, Neil Armstrong
#29
TIL That in case of emergency in a railroad crossing, instead of dialing 911, we should first look out for a blue and white sign that has a phone number that will get you in touch with the railroad dispatcher, who can radio the engineers of nearby trains to immediately stop short of that crossing.
Image source: guijcm
#30
TIL The prototype of the Rolls Royce Ghost was so quiet inside that it made test drivers sick. The engineers had to remove some of the noise-isolating material, and create seats that vibrated at specific frequencies to introduce some noise into the interior.
Image source: Rifletree
#31
TIL about Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup, a medicine used in the early 1900s to quiet infants and teething children. Popular in the US and UK it took twenty years of doctors’ complaints before it was withdrawn from the market for being a “baby killer.” The main ingredient was morphine.
Image source: marmorset
#32
TIL as a research student, Lawrence Bragg figured out how to use X-ray to study the atomic structure. His breakthrough discovery earned him the Nobel Prize in Physics at age 25.
Image source: romeofantasy, collections.slsa.sa.gov.au
#33
TIL the Japanese turned the third of their superbattleships (after Yamato and Musashi) into the largest aircraft carrier ever built at the time. After four years of construction and enormous cost, she left the shipyard and was immediately sunk by a submarine.
Image source: AirborneRodent, Marine engineer Hiroshi Arakawa
#34
TIL Charles Dickens had a talking pet raven named Grip, who terrorized his dog, buried valuables in the yard, and died eating “a pound or two” of lead paint. As a character in one of his novels, Grip is believed to have inspired Poe’s famous poem, and is on display in a Philadelphia public library.
Image source: jableshables
#35
TIL that South Korea’s CIA recruited a suicide squad to kill North Korea’s dictator, Kim Il Sung. The squad mutinied, killed their commanders, hijacked a bus to Seoul, and were blown up by their own military. The survivors were then executed.
#36
TIL that the Fahrenheit scale was standardized 18 years before Celsius. The world switch due to the British Empire. The United States is actually using the earlier standard.
Image source: nyg3n, Jarosław Kwoczała
#37
TIL Japan has used history textbook that contained references to the Nanjing Massacre, anti-Japanese resistance movements in Korea, forced suicide in Okinawa, comfort women, and Unit 731 since the mid 1990s.
Image source: Kaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar
#38
TIL beneath the Puerto Rico Trench is a mass so dense it has a gravitational pull on the surface of the ocean, causing it to dip somewhat. The Trench is also associated with the most negative gravity anomaly on earth, -380 milliGal, which indicates the presence of an active downward force.
Image source: Muted_Pomegranate738
#39
TIL Crypto.com mistakenly sent a customer $10.5 million instead of an $100 refund by typing the account number as the refund amount. It took Crypto.com 7 months to notice the mistake, they are now suing the customer.
Image source: must_go, ajay_suresh
#40
TIL that King Alfonso XIII of Spain,was known as “the Playboy king”and considered the pioneer of pornographic cinema in Spain.He commissioned pornographic films considered immoral and degenerate, including sexual relationships involving Catholic priests, and his passion “women with enormous breasts”.
Image source: thirdwheelforever, Kaulak – Museu Nacional
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