What’s on the agenda today, pandas? Perhaps you’re working, doing some laundry, going for a run and calling your parents to check in on them. And while you’re being so productive, you might as well squeeze in some time for learning too!

Below, we’ve gathered a list of fun facts that have recently been shared on the Today I Learned subreddit. 5 minutes from now, you’ll have plenty more information to share with friends and family members, and you’ll know even more about the world. Keep reading to also find a conversation with Jake Olefsky, CEO of Braingle.com, and be sure to upvote the facts you’re glad to have learned today!

#1

That Wimbledon umpires learn a vast array of swear words in many different languages in order to flag ,and subsequently fine, any athlete to break the no swearing rule.

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#2

Irish Supreme Court doesn’t classify Subway bread as bread, but instead as cake because of its sugar content.

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#3

The name of Ishi, known as the ‘last wild indian’ is an adopted name. In the Yahi culture, he one cannot speak his own name until introduced by another Yahi. When asked his name, he said: “I have none, because there were no people to name me”.

Image credits: foobadoop

To learn more about the wonderful world of fun facts, we reached out to the CEO of Braingle.com, Jake Olefsky, who was kind enough to have a chat with Bored Panda. “Sharing fun facts is amazing because you can surprise someone and teach them something new at the same time,” he shared. “They are good conversation starters!”

We were also curious about Jake’s favorite fun facts. “My favorite is the one that I have most recently learned, so it changes constantly,” he revealed. “Today, I learned that a stadium-sized comet is going to whizz past the earth this week! Hopefully it won’t hit us.”

#4

Of Alice Kober, who helped decipher an ancient script known as Linear B. Over 20 years, she meticulously recorded her research in a collection of 180,000 index cards. The script was deciphered in 1952, shortly after her death. It remains the only Bronze Age Aegean script that is readable now.

Image credits: EtOHMartini

#5

About Deborah Sampson. She disguised herself as a man so she could join the Continental Army and fight in the Revolutionary war. She was shot twice but fearing someone would find out her secret she removed one of the balls with a penknife and carried the other bullet in her leg her whole life.

Image credits: Stag328

#6

William Wrigley initially offered free baking powder as a gift for his soap but the powder turned out to be more popular. He switched to selling the powder and added sticks of gum as a gift. The gum became incredibly popular thus forcing him to switch and became the world’s leading gum company.

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As for the trivia and fun facts you’ll find on Braingle, Jake says it’s supplied by the site’s users. “Anyone can create their own trivia quiz on any topic that they are interested in,” he told Bored Panda.

“Of course, we have a review process where editors fact-check each question and proofread it for errors,” Jake added. “If you are an expert in some subject, please come and make a quiz on it to share with the world.”

#7

A 2013 survey, involving 1,081 doctors regarding advance end-of-life directives, found that 88.3% said they would choose do-not-resuscitate or “no code” orders for themselves.

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#8

That the “dumb” in dumbbells originally meant “mute”. A “dumb” bell was a contraption used to train church bell ringers in the fine art of bell ringing without annoying the entire neighborhood. Later, because of the similarities in shape, the name was applied to certain exercise equipment.

Image credits: smudge_47

#9

About 100,000 people died each year in India due to the collapse of vulture populations. Vultures were crucial to the ecosystem & their near extinction due to accidental poisoning extended the presence of animal carcasses in the local environment, increasing rabies & reducing water quality.

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Jake also says it’s important to be a lifelong learner “because it keeps your brain in shape, so you can stay sharp as you age.”

“It also makes you a more interesting person to be around, so you’ll make more friends. Just remain curious and try to learn something new every day,” he added. “Come to Braingle.com to take a trivia quiz on a wide range of topics, or create your own quiz on anything that you are interested in.”

#10

That 55% of YA readers are actually adults.

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#11

There is a excerpt from John Adam’s diary where he describes the time he had to share a tiny bed with Benjamin Franklin and, instead of sleeping, they had an argument about whether to keep the windows open or closed. Franklin eventually won the argument when Adams got too tired and fell asleep.

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#12

Many people hear voices and music in white noise. This is known as auditory pareidolia or “musical ear syndrome.”

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#13

That birds can get divorced. Over 90% of avian species form socially monogamous pair bonds, but they may end the bonds by ‘re-mating’ with a different partner after so-called ‘divorce’. Divorce rate increases with male promiscuity and migration distance.

Image credits: SteO153

#14

Horses went extinct in North America about 10,000 years ago. They were then reintroduced to the continent by the Spanish as early as the 1550s.

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#15

The USA federal witness protection program has a 100% success rate for those who follow their guidelines.

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#16

Of the 5 known assassination attempts on Queen Elizabeth II, the one that came closest to succeeding was attempted by a 17-year-old New Zealander, who shot at her with a .22 calibre rifle, but missed so badly that nobody even realised shots were fired.

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#17

That due to very poor consumer reviews and negative media attention in 2014, Haribo discontinued sugar free gummy bears. The gummy bears contained maltitol, a sugar alcohol that is not fully digestible and that ferments in the gut. It can cause increased flatulence, loose stools, and diarrhea.

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#18

Over 98% of Korean households have a special kimchi fridge

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#19

North American porcupines love salt and are known to eat backpackers’ road salt-covered boots left outside tents.

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#20

The first and last fatalities of building the Hoover Dam were a father and his son. They died on the same day, 14 years apart.

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#21

From the 1950s to 1970s, attempts were made at running bus services between London and India. The trip took about 50 days, cost about $100, and buses are said to have included private bunks and even a kitchen.

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#22

That camouflage clothing is illegal for civilians in several countries.

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#23

That famed scientist George Washington Carver had a respiratory infection in his youth which him with an unusually high pitched voice that “startled all who met him.”

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#24

Americans have a distinctive lean and it’s one of the first things the CIA trains operatives to fix.

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#25

Grasshopper are nearly 200 million years older than grass.

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#26

That WHAM-O’s Slip N’ Slide is not supposed to be used by persons over the age of 12. There have been rare instances (and lawsuits) of adults breaking their necks while using it and in 1993, the U.S. CPSC warned that the slide might cause permanent spinal cord injury to teens and adults.

Image credits: Sandstorm400

#27

That Titan’s surface organics surpass oil reserves on Earth. Saturn’s moon Titan has hundreds of times more liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth, according to Cassini data.

Image credits: Bitsoffreshness

#28

That there are over two dozen universities in the U.S. that have their own nuclear reactors.

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#29

The Old London Bridge was crowded with houses and shops, some of them reaching up to 6 storeys in height.

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#30

That the world’s largest kidney stone, removed from a patient in Sri Lanka, weighed 1.67 lbs (757.5g) and broke 2 world records.

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#31

Sigmund Freud dissected hundreds of eels in search of the male sex organs. He had to concede failure in his first major published research paper, and turned to other issues in frustration.

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#32

Until 2001 workers at Disneyland had to wear “communal underwear” while in character because normal undies would bunch up and become visible. After several outbreaks of pubic lice, the performers got the Teamsters Union involved and Disney finally agreed to employees wearing their own underpants.

Image credits: SappyGilmore

#33

Alexander Hamilton was the first major American politician publicly involved in a sex scandal. He had an affair with 23-year-old Maria Reynolds, whose husband was aware of the infidelity and likely orchestrated the whole thing to regularly extort blackmail money from Hamilton.

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#34

That China, by a large margin, consumes the most salt per citizen.

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#35

That the Beijing Weather Modification Office were enlisted by the Chinese government to ensure that the 2008 Summer Olympics were free of rain, by breaking up clouds headed towards the capital and forcing them to drop rain on outlying areas instead.

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#36

About “Cool Japan”, a Japanese government initiative since 2010 that aims to promote Japan’s attractiveness abroad. It does this by focusing on the aspects of Japanese culture that non-Japanese people find “cool” such as anime, games, cuisine etc.

Image credits: OrigamiRice

#37

That when Charles Guiteau bought the gun he would use to assassinate President Garfield, he chose one with a more expensive ivory handle, thinking it would look better in a museum. Though the gun was given to the Smithsonian, it has since been lost.

Image credits: Amir616

#38

That Tex-Mex has surpassed Italian as the most popular food genre in the United States.

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#39

There’s a rare disorder called Epidermodysplasia Verruciformis, turning people’s skin into tree-like bark with wart growths due to HPV. Also known as “Tree Man Illness,” the disorder is inherited when an individual inherits one copy, from each parent, of a defective gene.

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#40

That Otto Von Bismarck managed a posthumous snub of Wilhelm II, by having his own sarcophagus inscribed with the words, “A loyal German servant of Emperor Wilhelm I”.

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#41

The psychiatrist Henry Cotton would sometimes extract all of a patient’s teeth as he believed infected teeth to be the cause of psychiatric disorders. If that didn’t work, he’d remove testicles, ovaries, gall bladders, stomachs, spleens, cervixes and colons.

Image credits: GarysCrispLettuce

#42

About Kitty Fisher, who was famous for simply for being famous. In one incident, she fell off her horse while riding and exposed herself. Broadsheets & prints mocked her, but she seized the attention for herself by having her portrait painted by England’s most prominent painter.

Image credits: comrade_batman

#43

George Washington prevented a military coup over unpaid back wages by putting on a pair of glasses to read a letter from Congress, explaining he was “almost blind in the service of my country.” Moved to tears, his officers compromised.

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#44

The NASA plans to decomission the ISS by 2031, via controlled re-entry on the pacific ocean.

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#45

That “The Iodine State” was South Carolina’s nickname in the 1930s and even on license plates, in an effort to promote the state’s vegetables as having more healthy iodine than other other state’s vegetables.

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#46

That pro bowling balls have specially shaped “weight blocks” inside them to change how the ball curves.

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#47

That the Rambo lunchbox by Thermos in 1985 marked the end of the metal lunchbox era. Manufacturers switched to making lunchboxes with plastic because it was cheaper and because a group of mothers in Florida complained that metal lunchboxes were being used by children as weapons.

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#48

During his Flight School basketball camp in 2016, Michael Jordan was challenged by Chris Paul to a shooting drill where if Jordan missed three shots, the campers would all receive free Air Jordans. Jordan accepted and made every shot.

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#49

Former NBA Star Dwight Howard Ate 5,500 Calories in Candy Every Day for a Decade. Howard was consuming the amount of sugar equivalent to 24 chocolate bars every day.

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#50

That among all civilian jobs in in the US, workers spend on average more than 60% of their workday standing.

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