Remember when kids used to flip through encyclopedias to learn fun facts? Well, in today’s digital age you don’t need a thick book to gain knowledge. Everything is accessible with a simple scroll. From scientific discoveries to Hollywood trivia, all the information is just a click away.
Thankfully, with one such click, we reached the ‘Today I Learned‘ subreddit: a place where over 34 million people gather to share facts about the world. So, Pandas, scroll down to explore a collection of interesting tidbits. You never know, they might just come in handy at your next social gathering!
#1
Children in ancient China learned to write from “Thousand Character Text”, a 1000-word poem where the characters do not repeat and cover everything from philisophy to astrology.
Image credits: loneranger_26
#2
During the Apache Wars in the American Southwest, the Apache would cut the Army’s telegraph lines but reconnect the ends together with a strip of leather to make the break in the circuit nearly impossible to find.
Image credits: mr_noun
#3
After Salvador Dali expressed support for Spanish dictator Franco’s regime, Pablo Picasso refused to mention Dali’s name or acknowledge his existence for the rest of his life.
Image credits: CGWLP
#4
Ice-T made up a gang to keep real gang members off his back in high school. “We actually created a fake gang. We told people we were part of the Hillside Crips. We had them thinking there was hundreds of us. I never had any trouble.”
Image credits: oregonoxalis
#5
Alexander Graham Bell believed people should say “Ahoy” when they pick up the phone. Edison proposed “hello,” putting that word into common usage.
Image credits: aresef
#6
“Dune” was rejected by at least 20 publishers before being published by Chilton, the auto-manual company.
Image credits: SpringerNachE5
#7
In 2021 a new species of fish was identified that has the smallest adult brain size of all known vertebrates. It’s also the loudest of all known fish relative to its size.
#8
Laurence Fishburne was only 14 when filming Apocalypse Now, as he had lied about his age to get the role. Production took so long, he was 18 by the time of its release.
Image credits: borderbox
#9
Garden path sentences which is a grammatically correct sentence that starts in such a way that a reader’s most likely interpretation will be incorrect.
A few examples include
“The complex houses married and single soldiers and their families”
“The prime number few.”
“The man who hunts ducks out on weekends”
“Fat people eat accumulates”
“The old man the boat.”
Image credits: dawitfikadu3
#10
Research suggests that working irregular shifts for a decade ages the brain an extra six and a half years.
Image credits: hb20007
#11
Shakers, a christian sect that believed sexuality to be the root of all evil and original sin. All members went far enough in chastity to avoid shaking the opposite sex’s hands. Their membership declined from a peak of 5000 in 1840 to 3 members in 2019 due to lack of births.
Image credits: AthenOwl
#12
There are 17.3 million American digital nomads or people that travel freely while working remotely using technology and the internet.
Image credits: jlin8293
#13
Bruce Springsteen did not pay his taxes until he was put on the cover of Time Magazine in 1975. He then spent the next few years paying off his taxes, leaving him with only $20,000 on his 30th birthday despite multiple best-selling records and tours.
Image credits: greatmanyarrows
#14
Oldest cat to give birth (to 2 kittens) was Kitty at 30 years old. She passed away just short of 32 yo and gave birth to a total of 218 kittens.
#15
In 2015, Planet Earth II attempted to capture the birthing grounds of Saiga Antelope, where hundreds of thousands gather. Instead, the crew witnessed a disease spread, k***ing 150,000 in three days.
#16
US has not elected a below average height president for 120 years. Only 3 presidents since 1776 were not above average height.
Image credits: Eric1491625
#17
In 1909 the entire town of Ulysses, Kansas was relocated 3 miles west to escape their debts.
Image credits: Eskitz
#18
Sleeping on your side increases facial wrinkles that are perpendicular to expression based wrinkles.
Image credits: Cryptolution
#19
2,000-year-old sapphire ring believed to have been owned by Roman Emperor Caligula sold for £500,000 in 2019. The sky blue ring also has an etching on it that’s thought to depict Caligula’s fourth and last wife, Caesonia.
#20
Phil Collins spontaneously sang the lyrics to “In the Air Tonight”. They were completely improvised and he didn’t write them down until after singing them for the first time, on a piece of paper (which he still has) from his decorator.
#21
2022 DC superhero “Batgirl” was the most expensive ‘abandoned’ movie in history. Warner Bros. already spent over $90M finishing it, and the film was in post- production, when they decided not to release it.
#22
The most expensive medication in the world is Hemgenix. Cost is $3,500,000 for one treatment. It is used to treat hemophilia B, a genetic bleeding disorder.
Image credits: PACShrinkSWFL
#23
Hair will sometimes grow back differently after chemotherapy. People who have straight hair may find that they now have curly hair or vice versa. It can even grow back a different colour.
#24
Japanese death row inmates are executed by hanging. Three prison officers simultaneously press buttons to open the trap door so it is not clear which one is responsible.
#25
A young man pinched his nose and clamped his mouth shut to hold in a forceful sneeze and ended up barely able to speak or swallow, with considerable pain. Air bubbles reached into the deep tissue and muscles of his chest and it took seven days for him to recover in hospital.
Image credits: ubcstaffer123
#26
A man under the pseudonym “Kirk Allen” who became deluded that a sci-fi book series was actually the story of his life. He filled in the blanks with elaborate details and hallucinated himself in those settings. He was treated by Robert Lindner, who himself became obsessed with the books.
Image credits: Ok-Indication-5121
#27
The (in)famous problem of most scientific studies being irreproducible has its own research field since around the 2010s when the Replication Crisis became more and more noticed.
Image credits: narkoface
#28
Tōxcatl, an annual Aztec festival which revolved around the sacrifice of a young man who had been impersonating their god Tezcatlipoca since the last Tōxcatl festival, and the selection of a new man to take that role in the year to come.
#29
Last train robbery in the US was in 1970, at the San Antonio Zoo.
Image credits: achaean16
#30
Star Jelly, a translucent jelly-like substance that has been found for centuries. Scientists have no idea what it is. According to folklore, it is deposited on the Earth during meteor showers.
#31
Mother of Lee Harvey Oswald would sometimes go to Dealey Plaza and sell her autograph for five dollars.
#32
Movie Cleopatra cost $350 million adjusted for inflation to make, 3 times higher than Ben Hur. Due to its cost it was considered a box office bomb despite being highest grossing film of 1963.
#33
The F-104 Starfighter jet had such an abysmal safety record it was called the Widowmaker in West Germany. 292 of 916 units were lost to accidents there. Other countries reported similar rates.
#34
HBO cancelled Game of Thrones spin-off Bloodmoon in 2019 after spending $30 million on its pilot. HBO’s content chief explained that it was a hard project because George RR Martin had only written about 8 lines of text for the era the show was set in, so a lot more invention was required.
#35
After Hurricane Katrina, the number of babies named Katrina dropped sharply. After 10 years the name Katrina was 83 percent less common.
#36
Masi Oka, who played Hiro Nakamura in the TV show Heroes, founded the developer that made the game Outer Wilds.
#37
Rapper Shyne, famous for going to jail as part of Diddy’s posse as well as writing for many famous artists, converted to Orthodox Judaism in prison, moved to Jerusalem to study the torah up to 12 hours a day, and now has become a politician and leader of the opposition party in Belize.
#38
Carrie Fisher’s ashes were buried in urn shaped like a Prozac pill.
#39
Despite selling 500k copies in its first two hours and going 7x Platinum, Guns N’ Roses’ Use Your Illusion I & II albums were considered to have “underperformed” sales expectations.
#40
America, the country with the worlds 3rd largest population has only 9 cities with a population above 1 million according to the 2020 census and the 2022 estimate. 3 of those cities are in Texas.