35 Of The Best "Today I Learned" Facts That Prove We May Not Know As Much As We Might Think We Do
"Today I learned" posts are always some of our favorites because they teach us too.
Every day we are faced with many challenges and many things, but no matter how long you've been alive, there's always some way to learn more than you once knew. Sometimes, even after being around for 50+ years, you find out something new that you didn't know before.
Learning is a continuous process, and nobody stops learning, even if you're out of school. Learning is a huge part of living, and it's said that you will never—or should never—stop learning.
Sometimes, especially as we get older and start being distracted by other things, we forget to learn. We stop using our brains as much, and we stop pushing ourselves to find out new information and learn more.
There are many facts and pieces of information that many of us don't know, which is why we thought it was necessary to share these 35 "Today I learned" facts to help spread knowledge. We should never stop learning, and technically, we will never stop learning.
One of the easiest ways to find out more information is to read articles such as this one that share facts that almost nobody knows. So, let's go through these 35 "Today I learned" facts to see what new things you'll learn today.
1. This would be a great movie plot.
"TIL about Mary Ellen Pleasant, a Black woman in the 1800s who amassed a fortune by eavesdropping on investors while working as a domestic."
ap01102. Okay, now this is definitely a first-world problem.
"TIL a bridge in Ireland that was designed to swing open for ships couldn't be opened for four years because someone lost the remote control."
Wrexis,thejournal3. This is wild, but not surprising.
"TIL outraged Egyptians once lynched a Roman for killing a cat."
Salsal_Azar
4. Betty White, we see you.
"TIL that Betty White holds the Guinness World Record for the longest TV career by an entertainer, with credits spanning 80 years (1939 to 2019)."
--TheForce--
5. Now that's wifey material.
"TIL: Carrie, Stephen King's first novel that launched his career, was rescued from the trash can after his wife, Tabatha, removed the crumpled pages, read them, and told her husband she wanted to know the rest of the story."
LimeSugar
6. This is a very smart man, and we could learn from him—minus the ticket.
"TIL in 1993, a French man driving a Citroën car in a remote area of the Moroccan desert had a breakdown and became stranded. To survive, he tore down the car, built a motorcycle from the parts, and rode it back to civilization.
When he arrived, he was ticketed for operating an illegal vehicle."
WhenTardigradesFly
7. Queen Elizabeth II isn't giving up her throne.
"TIL Queen Elizabeth II has reigned longer than her father, uncle, grandfather, and great-grandfather combined."
soratoumiga
8. This is such a weird issue to have. Poor hedgehogs.
"TIL the British Hedgehog Preservation Society won a campaign in 2006 to force McDonald's to redesign their McFlurry cups due to hedgehogs repeatedly getting stuck in them and dying."
fatboyslick
9. No wonder they are super creepy.
"TIL that owls cannot move their eyes. This is because their eyes are not balls but cylinders that are held in place by bones called sclerotic rings.
This is also the reason that owls have evolved to be able to rotate their heads 270 degrees left and right, and 90 degrees up and down."
Cowzilla94
10. This is sick.
"TIL that in 1945, General George S. Patton, upon the liberation of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp in Germany, forced 1,000 local citizens to tour the camp to witness firsthand the atrocities that had taken place within."
ALFateyourcat
11. Polar bears are that common?
"TIL that in Churchill, Canada, locals keep their car doors unlocked to provide other residents a quick escape should they encounter a polar bear."
NorthNorthSalt
12. This is so sad.
"TIL in the mid-1890s, Mary Whiton Caulkins completed all requirements for a PhD in Psychology, but Harvard University refused to award her that degree because she was a woman."
67demigod
13. Education has failed us, sort of.
"TIL that according to the U.S. Department of Education, 54% of U.S. adults lack proficiency in literacy, reading below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level."
USPO-222
14. Now this is a common thing everywhere, and it's used in every single store.
"TIL the inventor of shopping carts, Sylvan Goldman, had to hire "decoy shoppers" to wheel the carts around stores and demonstrate their convenience, as they did not catch on initially."
guinneakeets
15. Octopuses are a little odd.
"TIL that octopuses have copper-based blood rather than iron-based blood, which makes their blood blue in color. (Incidentally, they also have three hearts to pump that blood.)"
Willie_Everlearn
16. This is insane how they adapted to doing that.
"TIL dolphins sleep with one eye open. Because they have to periodically go up for air and also be aware of predators, they are able to rest only half of their brain at a time and remain somewhat conscious."
DesignersUniverse
17. Victorian households were a little dangerous.
"TIL about the "murder bottle." Many Victorian mothers would use a self-feeding bottle to give their babies milk instead of breastfeeding.
These bottles were made of earthenware and glass and were incredibly hard to clean, which caused severe bacteria buildup and led to the deaths of thousands of babies."
BambiKittens666
18. I've never heard of the Lodz Ghetto.
"TIL of the Lodz Ghetto, where at one point, 20,000 'useless eaters,' mainly children under 10, were rounded up and taken away from their families to be exterminated. Many parents committed suicide."
Silicon-Based
19. We don't hear much about Titanic survivors.
"TIL of Titanic survivor Frankie Goldsmith. His father died during the sinking, and when he and his mother arrived in America, they settled in Detroit near Navin Field (Tiger Stadium).
He never attended a game due to the cheers of the crowd reminding him of the cries of the dying people in the water."
derstherower
20. Okay, this is fascinating.
"TIL about Ismail al-Jazari, who wrote the "Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices," where he described 50 mechanical devices along with instructions on creating them. He has been described as the father of robotics and modern-day engineering."
Humble_Award_4873
21. This is very sad and really surprising.
"TIL about Project 100k, where LBJ and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara decided to lower the mental and medical standards to recruit more soldiers to fight in Vietnam. These soldiers died at approximately three times the normal rate."
_Tactleneck_
22. Things have definitely changed.
WouldbeWanderer
23. This is such an odd requirement.
"TIL in 1941, almost 10% of all recruits for the U.S. military were rejected because they did not have six opposing teeth on their upper and lower jaws. U.S. dental health was so poor before WWII that it was the leading cause of rejection."
orbesomebodysfool
24. Leonardo Da Vinci is a fascinating human.
"TIL Leonardo Da Vinci saved over 13,000 pages of notes and drawings on anatomy, physiology, engineering, mechanics, geometry, mathematics, bird flight, flying machines, botany, proportions, topology, weaponry, musical instruments, art, and more, all in mirrored shorthand written from right to left."
wjbc
25. Well, this is an interesting history lesson.
"TIL that in Norse mythology, Loki got pregnant by a horse; he would later give birth to the eight-legged horse Sleipnir, which would become Odin's horse."
Dan_The_PaniniMan
26. I wonder why they turned down the role, though.
"TIL Keanu Reeves was offered the lead role in The Matrix after five leading actors in the 1990s turned it down."
bimmer012
27. The great cheese war.
"TIL the Great Cheese Riot of 1766 was a reaction to inflated cheese prices. The mayor tried to restore order but was knocked down by a cheese.
The military was called, and shots were fired, killing one man. He'd been guarding his cheeses."
RipplingSyrup
28. This is so scary to think about, but they thought on their toes.
"TIL in order to rescue the kids from the flooded Thailand cave in 2018, rescuers drugged the kids unconscious and then cave dove the unconscious kids over 1 km underwater."
B-Georgio
29. It's always interesting to hear the origins of language.
thisisnprnews
30. I'd hate to play in these Olympics.
"TIL Uday Hussein, son of Saddam Hussein, was named chairman of the Iraqi Olympic Committee in 1984. Athletes who disappointed him were subject to torture and imprisonment."
szekeres81
31. I mean, it was a little intense.
"TIL the movie Gremlins was so intense that it was responsible for the movie rating of PG-13."
Doctathunder
32. None of those alternatives sound better.
"TIL the Mongols had a superstition that said that spilling royal blood would lead to great disaster. So instead, they had other creative ways of executing such people.
Including sewing up their orifices, drowning them in molten metal, or having horses trample them."
jimi15
33. This is an iconic area and an even more iconic highway now.
MostlySoFlo
34. Hitler was one of the worst people to exist.
"TIL of Adolf Hitler’s Madagascar Plan. The plan was to relocate all the Jews to Madagascar. This idea was later shelved in favor of the mass genocide of the population."
___And_Memes_For_All
35. I mean, I don't really understand why he was fired, though.
"TIL that a middle school football coach in Oregon was fired for trying to take his team to Hooters to celebrate the end of the season."
TedTheodoreMcfly
These "Today I learned" facts are much more entertaining than we could've imagined. It's amazing to hear all of the newfound knowledge that people are discovering every day.
Let's keep spreading the knowledge and truth of history because it will help us all in the long run. Which fact was your favorite?
