Today I Learned 🎓

17 июля 2025 22:49

TIL that Jason Steele conceived Charlie the Unicorn as a gift for his mother's birthday. Steele had lost his job and most of his possessions in the wake of Hurricane Katrina hitting New Orleans [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

17 июля 2025 21:49

TIL that in 1971, a man hijacked a Thunder Bay to Toronto flight to Havana. 30 years later, he was arrested in USA when Canadian investigators googled his name, with the sole hit being a then-recent article about his work with Bronx kids. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

17 июля 2025 20:49

TIL Epona was a Gaulic goddess who protected horses and ponies. She became the only Celtic god worshiped in Rome, where she became the patroness of cavalry. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

17 июля 2025 18:49

TIL of the Cottingley Fairies. In 1917, two young English girls took photos of what they claimed were real fairies. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle then published the pics as proof of supernatural phenomena. It wasn't until the 1980s that the girls admitted the fairies were really cardboard cutouts [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

17 июля 2025 17:49

TIL that the first nuclear bomb test done by the United States Army, called the Trinity test in 1945, was so powerful that it melted desert sand into a unique green glass now called trinitite. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

17 июля 2025 15:49

TIL that Apple’s macOS and iOS took their roots from Unix systems written in the C programming language, which was created by Dennis Ritchie in the early 1970s at Bell Labs [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

17 июля 2025 15:49

TIL about Genie, a child of an abusive father who kept her strapped to a chair for the first 13 years of her life, regularly beating her and communicating to her only in inhuman growls. When she was finally rescued, the only two phrases she knew how to say were, "Stop it" and "No more." [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

17 июля 2025 13:49

TIL that Melbourne is 20km closer to Antarctica than is to Darwin Australia. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

17 июля 2025 10:49

TIL Swimmer's Itch is considered to be an emerging infectious disease you can get simply swimming in slow-moving rivers, lakes or ponds [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

17 июля 2025 08:49

TIL there was a Marine who was a duck, Sergeant Siwash, and was also awarded a Purple Heart. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

17 июля 2025 04:49

TIL of John O’Niell who followed Osama Bin Laden while at the FBI said “we’re due for something big” the night before dying in the World Trade Center on Sept 11, 2001, where he worked as the head of security since Aug 2001. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

17 июля 2025 00:49

TIL the most successful German u-boat commander—who sank 193 ships and 453,000 tons of material throughout WW1—was known to strictly follow prize law, giving civilian ships adequate time to evacuate on lifeboats and directions to the nearest port [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

16 июля 2025 21:49

TIL the only organization to have ever operated full scale nuclear facilities without a single serious safety incident is the US Navy, largely credited to the work of Hyman G Rickover [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

16 июля 2025 17:49

TIL Madrid nearly tripled its metro network in 12 years from 71mi (114km) to 197mi (317km). One 35 mile expansion program cost as much as 1.5 mile extension in NYC adjusted for inflation. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

16 июля 2025 16:49

TIL only 3.5% of Norway's land is considered arable land [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

17 июля 2025 22:49

TIL that a fringe rationalist ‘death cult’ in the Bay Area—whose members were talented data scientists from NASA, Google, and Oxford—faked their leader’s drowning, lived in box trucks armed with samurai swords, and are now linked to as many as six deaths across multiple states. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

17 июля 2025 20:49

TIL that hundreds of tree seeds went to the moon with the Apollo 14 mission, resulting in Moon Trees planted all around the country during the 1970s—few of which still stand today. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

17 июля 2025 18:49

TIL Crispin Glover did not reprise his role as George McFly in Back to the Future II and filed a lawsuit that created new rules for use of likeness with the SAG [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

17 июля 2025 18:49

TIL that during World War I, the French planned to build a fake Paris, complete with a duplicate Champs-Élysées, to confuse German bomber pilots. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

17 июля 2025 16:49

TIL: In the 1971 Supreme Court case O'Hair v. Paine, American Atheists challenged open readings from the Bible by U.S. astronauts in space. The case was dismissed because space is outside the court's jurisdiction. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

17 июля 2025 15:49

TIL of WW2 British Paratrooper Colonel Richard Pine-Coffin. His somewhat unlucky surname led to his troops nicknaming him Colonel "Wooden Box." [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

17 июля 2025 13:49

TIL Martin Scorsese is a huge admirer of Polish cinema from the 50's and 60's and often shows his favorite classic Polish films to actors and even executives before working with them. Scorsese has an honorary doctorate from a Polish university and made a list of his 21 favorite Polish movies. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

17 июля 2025 11:49

TIL that while Avocados are mostly used in savory dishes in the West, they’re often enjoyed as desserts in Southeast Asia [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

17 июля 2025 09:49

TIL about Perrine, Florida - In 1948, after it elected a black mayor the all-white city council dissolved the town [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

17 июля 2025 07:49

TIL about “wet bulb temperature” a combination of heat and humidity so extreme that if it reaches around 35°C (95°F), even fit, healthy individuals resting in the shade with unlimited water can no longer cool down by sweating. Death can occur within hours. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

17 июля 2025 02:49

TIL that Clint Eastwood personally called Richard Harris to ask him to play English Bob in the 1992 film Unforgiven. Harris was, at that moment, watching High Plains Drifter, another Eastwood film. This led Harris to believe he was being pranked. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

16 июля 2025 23:49

TIL Denver, CO has an official mayor's residence that no mayor has ever lived in. It was donated to the city in 1998 and none of the 5 mayors since that time has opted to move in. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

16 июля 2025 19:49

TIL Walt Disney’s last words were “Kurt Russell” [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

16 июля 2025 17:49

TIL that Morocco was the first country to formally recognize the United States as an independent nation in 1777. The Moroccan-American Treaty of Friendship, signed in 1786, is the longest unbroken treaty in U.S. history. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

16 июля 2025 16:49

TIL that 7 in 10 Canadian drivers admit to speeding at least occasionally, with the average speeder going 12km/h over the limit on highways, 10km/h over on larger roads, and 7km/h over on residential streets. Many view this as not "technically speeding" due to lack of enforcement. [Source]