30 Facts From The "Today I Learned" Subreddit, That Will Blow Your Mind
Here are some random facts shared by various people on the subreddit.
Some facts are so strange they feel made up, until you realize they are very real. That is the appeal of the Today I Learned subreddit, where people share surprising bits of history, science, pop culture, and everyday trivia.
In this roundup, the posts range from odd animal experiments and forgotten inventions to bizarre records, movie trivia, and little-known moments from history. The fun is not just in the facts themselves, but in how unexpected they are when stacked together.
Here are 30 TIL facts that are weird, memorable, and hard to forget.
1. Nefertiti, also known as the jumping spider, was launched to the International Space Station to determine if it could capture prey in microgravity.
The creature indeed caught its prey by walking slowly instead of leaping. It was able to survive reentry and readjust to normal gravity prior to its natural death.
Blackadder2882. The politician who holds the record for history's most fraudulent election is Charles D. B. King.
He became Liberia's president in 1927. At the time, the country had only 15,000 registered voters.
ThePainCrafter3. Every year for Christmas, Steve Harvey would send a television to his teacher who said that he would never be on TV.
quivalentLock0
That is a pretty memorable way to prove someone wrong.
4. Hammond's Jurassic Park's entrance fee was initially priced at $550.
unimatrixq
5. Air conditioners were invented by Willis Carrier.
However, he didn't do it to cool people; it was to reduce the damaging humidity of a print shop.
BitterFuture
6. A ten-hour movie that shows drying paint on the wall was created by director Charlie Lyne.
Its duration was 10 hours and seven minutes. This was made to troll the British Board of Film Classification (B.B.F.C.), which had to sit through the entire movie.
foxmulder2014
7. The Arizona town Why was originally named Y.
This was because of the Y-shaped intersection of two roads. It changed to Why due to a law that requires town names to be a minimum of three letters.
Maximus125
Some of these facts sound almost too odd to be true.
8. Fossil words are words that have fallen out of everyday use.
They are still used as idioms, though. These include 'fro' and 'lo.'
eqb, image via Snapwire
9. Astronauts have to sleep near air vents.
It's risky if they don't; the carbon dioxide coming from their lungs might bubble around their heads due to weightlessness.
motiongfx515
10. A thirteen-year-old girl who was a fan of the Harry Potter series wrote a 365,000-word fanfiction from 2003 to 2005.
She passed away six days after completing the work. With the notes she left, her father used them for the second book.
SLJ7
11. Dolphins sleep with one eye open.
This is because they need to watch out for predators. Periodically, they also need to rise for air.
DesignersUniverse
12. Former pro basketball player Lisa Leslie scored 101 points in 16 minutes as a high school athlete.
From the floor, she shot 37 of 56, and from the line, it was 27 of 35. She wasn't able to break the record for women's points in a high school basketball game because the opposing team's coach declined to play in the second half.
1sterMeeeseeeks
13. Burkitshi are Mongolia's eagle hunters.
The nomadic tribe hunts with eagles, which are typically female because they are larger and known to be fiercer. They capture the eagles at the age of four and release them into the wild after 10 years.
WhileFalseRepeat
The list keeps getting stranger in the best way.
Next up, if you’re still thinking, check out 81 visual anomalies that will leave your logic spinning in the mud.
14. Yale psychologists found in a 2018 study that introverts prone to melancholy seemed to be better at understanding how people behave in a group than their outgoing peers.
operator139
15. The Tag brothers started playing tag in 1990.
It is a group of 10 men who chase each other around the USA, traveling by car, plane, and more. They were still at it in 2018.
Majorpain2006
16. Brisbane was first founded as a penal colony for prisoners who committed new crimes after arriving in Australia.
theSchn3id
17. Christopher Lee sent Peter Jackson a picture of himself donning a wizard's costume, as he wanted to play Gandalf. However, Jackson decided he would be great as Saruman instead.
thisCantBeBad
18. McDonald's had to phase out Ronald McDonald quietly after the 2016 clown scare video fad.
SweetTeaRex92
Even the familiar facts have a weird backstory here.
19. Research indicates that 94% of Brits have used weather in their conversations over the past six hours.
Thirty-eight percent of these individuals admitted that they had done so in the past hour. In other words, about one-third of the people in the UK are either talking about the weather, have done so, or are about to do so.
JMASTERS_01, image via Alvin Leopold
20. Charles-Michel de l'Épée, the very first educator of the deaf, was taught sign language through a chance encounter.
Brutal_Deluxe_
21. Centuries after the death of Alexander the Great, his final resting place became a tourist attraction.
Roman emperors left him with souvenirs. In one account, Augustus Caesar tried to touch the mummy but accidentally broke its nose.
insley-Sorsby
22. Dr. Edwin Chandross was the one who uncovered the chemical reaction happening in glowsticks.
He discovered it in 1962. Sadly, he never knew that "chemiluminescent" objects were well known at concerts until a 2013 Vice interview.
howmuchbanana
23. A lawyer in California filed for a restraining order to prevent his neighbor's kids from playing basketball.
He claimed that their game was the reason his property value dropped by $100,000. The court denied his request, stating that reasonable people can expect a number of annoyances and inconveniences from neighbors.
TheQuarantinian
24. The SEGA/SNES game The Lion King was deliberately made difficult by the developers.
Disney instructed them to do so to prevent people from beating the game during a rental period at Blockbuster. Several of those developers later apologized to the fans.
bbcplanetgirth
By now, the trivia has fully embraced chaos.
25. It was Kodak that discovered the first atomic bomb test. Customers complaining about the black spots in their photos led to this discovery.
enerallyAwfulHuman
26. After an earthquake destroyed Egypt's Colossi of Memnon, the shattered statue began to sing during sunrise.
Modern scientists believe early morning heat caused dew trapped within the statue’s cracks to evaporate, creating a series of vibrations that echoed through the thin desert air.
rifletruffles
27. Scientists no longer paint the large orange fuel tanks connected to the space shuttles to save 600 pounds.
CareBearOvershare
28. Los Angeles is the world's first city to synchronize all traffic lights.
WhileFalseRepeat
29. Seventy-one South Korean teenagers, who were also students, were assigned to protect the country's headquarters.
Despite having no battle and firearms experience, they held back a sudden attack from North Korean soldiers for 11 hours. They were still wearing uniforms at the time of the attack.
hull534
30. After the destructive Hurricane Andrew, South Florida building codes required external doors to swing outwards. This provides better hurricane protection.
anobe24
These are the kind of facts that stick with you.
Want more mind-bending anomalies, like the jumping spider that caught prey in microgravity? Read about 70 bizarre events that prove our planet is weirder than science fiction.
