We’ve got both good news and bad news, dear Pandas. Learning never ever ends. But, on the flip side—learning never ends! The world is far more interesting and changes at a much faster pace for us to forget about ever learning something new the moment we finish school or college. Education is a lifelong pursuit, and staying hungry for knowledge helps you appreciate everything to the fullest. The daily grind can’t get to you if you’re always curious!
The ‘Today I Learned’ online community is a mammoth of cool, interesting, and uncomfortable facts that people from all around the globe learned only recently. They’re the kind of historical, scientific, and other insights that you probably wouldn’t ever hear at school. We’ve collected some of the best new facts people decided to share on r/todayilearned, so put on your thinking caps and scroll down to check them out. Oh, and don’t worry, there won’t be a test! Who needs grades when the best reward is reigniting your passion for learning?
The TIL community is probably one of the most interesting corners of the internet. We’re huge fans of them here at Bored Panda! Once you’re done absorbing all of the knowledge in this post, you may want to take a peek at our most recent posts about the subreddit here, here, and here.
Bored Panda reached out to Lenore Skenazy for her insights about what issues there are with the current education system, as well as why grades aren’t the most important thing in the world. She kindly explained why school, by itself, won’t give your kids everything they need to succeed in life, and why they need far more free time than they have now.
Skenazy is the president of Let Grow, a nonprofit promoting childhood independence and resilience, and the founder of the Free-Range Kids movement. She also writes for Reason.com. Read on for our full interview with her.
#1
TIL, in 1997, a Russian poacher, Vladimir Markov, shot and wounded a tiger, and stole part of a boar it had been eating. 12 hours later, the tiger tracked down the poacher at his cabin and ate him.
Image source: cruisingthoughts, Pixabay
#2
TIL after being scolded by a woman who felt that his shoes were too expensive for kids, Shaq forwent a $40 million deal with Reebok & signed one with Walmart. He then brought in designers from Reebok so that his Walmart shoes would look costlier than the $20 price. Over 400 million pairs were sold
Image source: suzukigun4life, shaq
#3
TIL in 2017, a woman named Chau Smith ran seven marathons in seven consecutive days on seven continents in celebration of her 70th birthday.
Image source: Canes-Venatici, nbcnews
#4
TIL nine women, called “The 9 Nanas,” kept a decades-long secret that even their husbands knew nothing about. For 30 years, they gathered at 4 a.m. to bake cakes, send care packages to people, anonymously pay bills and buy clothes for those in need.
Image source: Canes-Venaticii, Monika Grabkowska
#5
TIL Mr. Snuffleupagus from ‘Sesame Street’ was originally a friend of Big Bird’s that everyone else thought was imaginary, and it was decided that he should be seen by other people to encourage children to talk about any abuse they might have suffered.
Image source: davetowers646, sesamestreet
#6
TIL about Tommy Manville, the heir to the Johns-Manville fortune. The terms of his family trust granted him $250,000 “when he married.” As a result he got married 13 times, giving the women a cut of the proceeds before quickly divorcing them.
Image source: theHAREST , wikipedia
#7
TIL of Vitalis of Gaza, a monk who paid prostitutes his daily wages to dissuade them from the profession. The women he served later carried him to his grave, processing him with candles and lanterns. The Catholic Church venerates him as the Patron Saint of Prostitutes and Day Laborers.
Image source: PastPriority-771, wikipedia
#8
TIL: 2nd POTUS Adams never owned a slave and declined on principle to use slave labor
Image source: nomnomnomnomRABIES
#9
TIL about the Asoh defense, a term for just taking the blame when you’re at fault. It’s named after a Japanese pilot named Kohei Asoh, who crash-landed a full-passenger jet in the San Francisco Bay. When asked what happened, he said: “As you Americans say, I f**ked up.”
Image source: That-Situation-4262, raildriverpone
#10
Today I learned taking photos instead of actually viewing the scene causes your brain to outsource the memory; this causes you to not retain the information as detailed as you normally would. This is called the photo-taking impairment effect.
Image source: sarcasticslab420, Lisa Fotios
#11
TIL that van Gogh’s rendering of the stars in Café Terrace at Night is so precise that the painting can be dated within a day or two of its creation.
Image source: doc17
#12
TIL during a tour of Germany in 1958, Jewish Comedian Groucho Marx climbed a pile of rubble that marked the site of Adolf Hitler’s bunker, the site of Hitler’s death, and performed a two-minute Charleston.
Image source: Grumplogic
#13
TIL a mannequin in a California funhouse was revealed to be a real body when the arm fell off in 1976. It was the corpse of a man named Elmer McCurdy, an outlaw shot dead by sheriffs 65 years earlier.
Image source: That-Situation-4262, Freddy Irra
#14
TIL brussels sprouts used to have a bitter taste until breeders in the 90s started to cross-pollinate different varieties in order to remove the chemicals that caused the bitterness. The result of their work has lead to brussels sprouts’ recent culinary popularity
Image source: wilymon, Keenan Loo
#15
TIL in 1831 the Swedish Navy planted over 300,000 oak trees with the intention of harvesting them for ships 150 years later. They remain unharvested today.
Image source: Cranyx
#16
TIL: Pac-Man grossed $1 billion in quarters in its first year of release. In the following year, 1982, it earned $6 billion in quarters, which was more than the combined amount of money spent in Vegas casinos and US movie theaters that year.
Image source: theotherbogart, Giorgio Trovato
#17
TIL There are only between 150-300 kidnappings of children by strangers each year in the US. The other 200,000 kidnappings each year are by relatives.
Image source: Ok_Letter_9284, Caleb Woods
#18
TIL about Ted’s bottle. Ted d’Auvergne, a New Zealand WW2 soldier was at the pub and late for his embarkation train. He asked the publican to set aside his 2nd bottle of beer to drink when he came home. Ted was killed but the promise was kept and that bottle of beer is still there.
Image source: Spare-Cap-3152, waimate
#19
TIL in 2010, Washington D.C. held a mock election and invited hackers to test its online voting system. They managed to elect Master Control Program from “Tron” as mayor, Skynet from “Terminator” to Congress, and Bender from “Futurama” to the school board. It took D.C. officials two days to notice.
Image source: Johnnycockseed, Soumil Kumar
#20
TIL for 50+ years, Australian children in the outback attended school via shortwave radio and sent homework via air mail due to the distance between homes. “Schools of the Air” were many children’s first social experience outside their families; its quality equaled or surpassed traditional schools’.
Image source: lemontreelemur
#21
TIL a wanted fugitive performed plastic surgeries on his face using scissors, a box cutter and a needle with thread in order to avoid capture. Some of the surgeries were done in public restrooms. He evaded arrest for over 2 years
Image source: RainManToothpicks, cbsnews
#22
TIL that after Toyota recalled millions of cars for stuck accelerator pedals, a man was freed from prison after his Toyota caused an accident that killed 3.
Image source: EthanPuzzle
#23
TIL that the US post office turns children’s letters to Santa into a giant gift registry that allows citizens to fulfill children’s Christmas wishes
Image source: larsiusprime, KoolShooters
#24
TIL Dogs have much more expressive faces than wolves. Dogs make an effort to make eye contact with humans and have notably high control over their eyebrows when compared to wolves. Looking into a dog’s eyes has comparable results to a parent looking at their child.
Image source: jamescookenotthatone
#25
TIL John von Newmann was a child prodigy who could divide 8-digit numbers in his head by age 6. By age 8, he was fluent in Ancient Greek, had mastered calculus and would amuse his parents’ friends by reciting book pages after just glancing at them. He also developed the modern computer architecture.
Image source: HumanNutrStudent
#26
TIL that when Unsolved Mysteries aired a segment on missing child Nyleen Marshall, they were contacted by a man who thought he might have gone to school with Nyleen. This turned out not to be Nyleen, but a different missing child, Monica Bonilla, who had been abducted by her noncustodial parent.
Image source: TychaBrahe
#27
TIL on the morning of July 26, 1184, Henry VI held court at the Petersberg Citadel. The weight of the assembled nobles caused the second story floor of the building to collapse. Most of the nobles fell into the latrine cesspit below the ground floor, where about 60 of them drowned in liquid s**t.
Image source: The_Critical_Cynic, wikipedia
#28
TIL that somewhere between 3% and 21% of the population have a genetic variation in an olfactory receptor gene (OR6A2) that makes cilantro taste very unpleasant. Those with the variant describe the taste of cilantro as “a combination of soap and vomit” or similar to the odor emitted by stinkbugs.
Image source: Lagavulin16_neat, Tomasz Olszewski
#29
TIL Longyearbyen, Norway is the world’s northernmost settlement with a population greater than 1,000. There is a ban on cats, a monthly alcohol purchase limit, and a requirement to carry a rifle while outside for protection from polar bears.
Image source: Winger52, wikipedia
#30
TIL that the theme song from Mission Impossible get is its iconic beat of “long long short short” from the Morse code of “M” and “I”, which is long long short short.
Image source: pango3001
#31
TIL that part of Icelandic Christmas lore is that a giant cat, the Yule Cat will kill you if you don’t give or receive clothing on Christmas
Image source: WoodsyHikes
#32
TIL that Charles Dickens was a great lover of cats, so much so that when one of his beloved cats, Bob, passed away, Dickens was so upset that his sister-in-law fashioned one of Bob’s paws into a letter opener. Dickens kept this at his side as he wrote and he used it every morning to open his mail.
Image source: robaato72, wikipedia
#33
TIL that the 1927 General Election in Liberia had a turnout of 1660%. The winner secured 240,000 votes, when the country had less than 15,000 eligible voters.
Image source: New_Blacksmith_115
#34
TIL, for a scene in his movie Tenet, where a Boeing 747 plane crashes into (a fictional) Oslo Airport, they crashed an ACTUAL, REAL 747, because Christopher Nolan determined it would actually be cheaper than models or CGI.
Image source: Comic_Book_Reader
#35
TIL After the release of OutKast’s “Hey Ya” – which contains the line, “Shake it like a Polaroid picture!” – Polaroid had to remind the users of its cameras not to “shake” their photos when they were developing, as this can damage the image
Image source: davetowers646
#36
TIL that all Ashkenazi Jews are at most 30th cousins because of a genetic bottleneck about 700 years ago.
Image source: doesntgetthepicture, cottonbro studio
#37
TIL a reporter at a British newspaper received an anonymous tip telling him to “call the American Embassy in London for some big news” about 25 minutes before JFK was assassinated.
Image source: dwdj
#38
TIL about Henry Cotton, an asylum director who believed that all insanity was caused by sepsis in other parts poisoning the brain, leading to widespread amputation of his patients’ colons, teeth, reproductive organs, and even stomachs in order to “cure” them, with as many as 45% dying as a result
Image source: BrokenEye3, wikipedia
#39
TIL in a 2005 Empire article, Henry Cavill was dubbed “the unluckiest man in Hollywood” after losing roles in Bond and Harry Potter franchises.
Image source: Ajthaking31, henrycavill
#40
TIL 69 is the only number whose square (4761) and cube (328509) use every decimal digit from 0–9 exactly once.
Image source: SaintBiggusDickus, foolfillment
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