It’s worth being curious about the world because it keeps your mind healthy, and it's a ton of fun on top of that. There’s always something new to learn, and it is a humbling experience to realize just how many things we don’t know. And one of the best places on the internet to face this head-on is the ‘Today I Learned’ group that gets millions of visitors every week.
We have collected our favorite interesting and fresh facts from the TIL community that helped us expand our minds, and we hope that they’ll help you, too. Put on your thinking cap, get your brain ready, and let’s get into it.
#61
TIL despite boxed Kraft macaroni and cheese being an iconic example of American processed food, it is significantly more popular in Canada, where 55% more boxes are consumed per capita than the US.
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12points
#62
TIL the public can make voluntary donations to the British government without a reason. In 2005 for example, a total of £5 was donated.
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12points
#63
TIL that an amateur player called Chris Moneymaker won the 2003 Poker World Series. His friend, Dave Gamble helped him travel to the tournament. Both were their real last names.
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11points
#64
TIL a UK man drove for more than 70 years without a driver's license or insurance. It was finally revealed after he was pulled over for the first time ever in his 80s. He had never been in an accident, caused anyone an injury, or made anyone lose out financially by hitting them while uninsured.
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11points
#65
TIL that wolves outperform dogs in following human social cues when they are raised alongside humans.
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11points
#66
TIL Moses declared all debts to be absolved every 7 years in conjunction with the Shmita, the Sabbath year.
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10points
#67
TIL that in 2015, former Google employee Sanmay Ved purchased the Google.com domain for $12 after it briefly appeared as available on the Google Domains platform. As a reward for reporting the incident, Google paid Ved $6,006.13, which he later donated it.
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10points
#68
TIL Steve Burns left "Blue's Clues" because he was starting to go bald. “I knew I wasn’t going to be doing children’s television all my life, mostly because I refused to lose my hair on a kid’s TV show. And it was happening fast.”
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9points
#69
TIL that December 25 being the birthday of Jesus was decided by pope Julius I around year 350, and nobody really knows why Julius made this decision and chose this specific date. There are various theories, but his actual reasoning for the decision is lost history.
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8points
#70
TIL Seth MacFarlane was 25 years old when Family Guy premiered in 1999, making him the youngest showrunner in Hollywood history.
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8points
#71
TIL China built millions of new homes that sat empty for years, on the assumption that people would eventually live there.
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8points
#72
TIL about PAN-PAN. PAN-PAN is the international standard distress signal that someone aboard a boat, ship, aircraft, or other vehicle uses to declare that they need help and that the situation is urgent but for the time being, does not pose an immediate danger to anyone's life or to the vessel.
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8points
#73
TIL that many major cities have disabled thousands of crosswalk buttons but keep them installed anyway because removal is too expensive. In New York City, only about 100 of 1,000 buttons actually work.
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7points
#74
TIL only 23 video games have been released with an Adult Only (AO) rating from the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB).
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6points
#75
TIL Megan Fox met Brian Austin Green in 2004 when she was 18 and he was 30. They engaged in 2006, broke off their engagement in 2009, reunited and married in 2010, separated in 2015, reconciled in 2016, dismissed their divorce in 2019, split again in 2020 and divorced in 2021. They have three sons.
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-9points