Interesting ‘Today I Learned’ Facts That Prove Education Has No Age Limit
There is no age for education and learning; it's a continuous process.
Learning is a continuous process that starts at a very young age and continues until the very end (as long as your brain can still handle it). All of your daily interactions lead to learning many new things that you may have ignored before, either by experiencing something or simply by reading or hearing about it. According to Dr. Diane Ravitch, an education historian, "Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself." Our human curiosity compels us to ask questions and find ways to get answers; it's like an itch in your head that motivates you to learn new things about the world. Some people are less curious than others, but they still inevitably end up learning new things without even trying. Even the biggest intellectuals still have a lot of learning to do since the available knowledge is almost endless, and it would take many lifetimes to learn all of it. As James Clear, author of "Atomic Habits," states, "You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great." The facts below prove that it's never too late to start learning. There are so many interesting things to learn about the world, and it would be a shame to remain unaware of them. Scroll down and check out some of the most interesting TIL facts from Reddit users.
1. "TIL a Turkish mother who read lecture notes for four years to her blind daughter in law school has been awarded an honorary degree along with her daughter."
@seyda_karaoglu/ Twitter2. "TIL about the horse, Sergeant Reckless."
A horse who served with the Marines in Korea. She was able to haul ammunition by herself without a handler, would seek a bunker or lay down when under fire, and received two Purple Hearts as well as other medals for her service in the Korean War.
unsplash3. "TIL in 1908, the NYT reported a story about a dog that would push kids into the Seine to earn beefsteak treats for 'rescuing' them."
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4. "TIL there are 3,200-year-old Egyptian tablet records of excuses for why people missed work."
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5. "TIL the Wright Brothers only flew together on the same flight one time, a six-minute flight on May 25th, 1910."
They promised their father, Milton, that they would never fly together to avoid the chance of a double tragedy and to ensure that one brother would remain to continue their flight experiments.
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6. "TIL that the 1996 movie 'Twister' was rated PG-13 for 'intense depiction of very bad weather.'"
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7. "TIL that 'Old Book Smell' is caused by lignin—a compound in wood-based paper—when it breaks down over time, emitting a faint vanilla scent."
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8. "TIL that Alice Munro, co-founder of a bookstore with her then-husband Jim, started writing after reading some of the store's stock and thinking, 'I can write better books than this.' In 2013, she won the Nobel Prize in Literature."
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9. "TIL Captain Robert Campbell, while a prisoner of the Germans in WW1, asked the Kaiser to visit his dying mother in England. Surprisingly, he was given permission, provided he returned to prison afterward. He did."
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10. "TIL that by allowing a wolf population to recover, traffic collisions caused by deer are reduced by nearly 25%;"
The reduction is not based as much on the decimation of the deer population but on the 'landscape of fear' created by the wolves.
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11. "TIL that the new Rolls-Royce Ghost's soundproofing was so over-engineered that occupants in the car found the near-total silence disorienting, and some felt sick. Acoustic engineers had to go back and work on 'harmonizing' various sounds in the car to add a continuous soft whisper."
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12. "TIL that the hairstyle Princess Leia wears in Star Wars was inspired by women of the Mexican Revolution, most notably guerrilla fighter Clara de la Rocha."
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13. "TIL in 2011, a 29-year-old Australian bartender found an ATM glitch that allowed him to withdraw far beyond his balance."
In a bender that lasted four and a half months, he managed to spend around $1.6 million of the bank’s money.
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14. "TIL about Jean Boulet, who in 1972 set the world record for the highest altitude reached in a helicopter, 40,280 ft."
During descent, his engines failed, and he landed the helicopter without power, setting another record in the process for the highest unpowered helicopter landing.
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15. "TIL every year at 3 p.m. on Christmas Eve, the 1958 special 'Donald Duck and His Friends Wish You a Merry Christmas' is screened on Sweden's main channel."
Swedes are so compelled by the cartoon that last year during the program, cell data usage fell by 28% and calls to emergency services dropped by 16%.
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16. "TIL when you see actors smoking cigarettes in movies, they’re often smoking 'herbal cigarettes' which contain other plants like lettuce or tea leaves instead of tobacco."
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17. "TIL Cato once believed he caught Caesar reading a note implicating himself in a conspiracy to assassinate Cicero during a session of the Senate."
Forcing the note to be read to the Senate, it turned out to be a love letter from his own sister to Caesar, who had slept with her the night before.
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18. "TIL a father, John Crowley, was told that his two infant children had an incurable genetic disorder that would kill them in less than a year."
He refused to accept this, so he founded a biotech company (with no prior experience) that pioneered an experimental enzyme therapy that saved their lives.
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19. "TIL when one adventurer drove a Jeep Wrangler to the world record altitude of 6,646 m, he left a sign saying:
"Jeep Parking Only: All others don't make it up here anyway." The next record breakers, who had a Suzuki Samurai and climbed up to 6,688 m on the same volcano, removed that sign.
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20. "TIL that Toyota is headquartered in the city of Toyota, Japan, and was founded there, but is not named after the city."
In fact, the city (originally called Koromo) renamed itself after the company in 1959 because Toyota had become so famous.
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21. "TIL in 2013, JCPenney sold a stainless steel tea kettle that attracted controversy due to its perceived resemblance to Adolf Hitler."
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Knowledge is infinite, and you can never possibly learn all of it, but you can at least make yourself familiar with interesting facts that help make you even more curious. It's never too late to learn; it has absolutely no age.
