Let’s give a farewell to all those sleepless nights at school, sweaty exams, and never-ending misery that permeated the greatest part of our early adulthood, because there’s another side of the coin called the power of knowledge. And we’re talking bits of wisdom that didn’t find a place in textbooks but rather gave us a whole new way of learning new things.
Welcome to r/TIL—the internet’s homage to the continuous curiosity we carry through life, picking up all the interesting segments on the way. So get ready to soak in a new batch of hand-picked factoids below, and be sure to check out our previous posts on things people just learned here, here, and here.
#1
TIL: A park bench in Bristol was given an official postal address so doctors could register the homeless as patients
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654points
#2
TIL US Airways kicked a blind and and his dog off a plane in 2013 after the Dog repositioned itself during a two hour delay. They cancelled the flight after passengers disembarked in protest saying the flight attendant responsible be kicked off instead of the man and his service dog.
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553points
#3
TIL In 1802, Napoleon added a Polish legion to fight off the slave rebellion in Haiti. However, the Polish army joined the Haitian slaves in the fight for independence. Haiti's first head of state called Polish people "the White Negroes of Europe", which was then regarded as a great honour.
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483points
#4
TIL that during WW1, the MI5 used Girl Guides to deliver secret messages. They used Girl Guides instead of Boy Scouts because they found out that Boy Scouts weren't efficient enough, boisterous and talkative.
468points
#5
TIL of Bessie Coleman, the first African American and Native American female pilot who would only perform if the crowds were desegregated and entered thru the same gates.
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434points
#6
TIL that Fermilab used to clean its particle accelerators with a ferret named Felicia, who would run through the tubes with cleaning supplies attached and be rewarded with hamburger meat
418points
#7
TIL that at the age of 17, Steven Spielberg directed a sci-fi film called "Firelight". The budget was $500, and it was shown at a local cinema, with 500 people coming, and tickets costing a dollar each. However, one person paid $2, so the movie made $1, making it Spielberg's first commercial success
415points
#8
TIL In 1911 The Rigby family included their cat Tom in their census form. 'Tom Cat' was listed as being an 8-year old, married Mouse-Catcher, Soloist and Thief with 16 children. His birthplace was listed as Cheshire and he was described as being 'speechless' in the infirmity section of the form.
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366points
#9
TIL Japanese doctor Tetsu Nakamura devoted his life revitalising deserts in Afghanistan, making forests and wheat farmland and contributing to peace. Nakamura was decorated with the Japanese Order of the Rising Sun and Afghan National Medal.
366points
#10
TIL that Mesopotamians figured out that the Earth orbited the sun about 1,700 years before Copernicus and Newton. They also figured out that the moon causes the tides and that the Earth rotates around its axis.
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359points
#11
TIL that anatomically dogs have two arms and two legs - not four legs; the front legs (arms) have wrist joints and are connected to the skeleton by muscle and the back legs have hip joints and knee caps.
355points
#12
TIL that in 2009 Icelandic engineers accidentally drilled into a magma chamber with temperatures up to 1000C (1832F). Instead of abandoning the well like a previous project in Hawaii, they decided to pump water down and became the most powerful geothermal well ever created.
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331points
#13
TIL although Wayne’s World (1992) was released after Freddie Mercury died, he got to see the car headbanging scene featuring Bohemian Rhapsody shortly before he passed away on November 24, 1991. He loved it and foresaw how the use of the song would ignite a comeback for Queen in the United States.
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319points
#14
TIL The Godfather's famous cat-in-lap scene was entirely unscripted. A stray cat randomly wandered onto the set, so Coppola grabbed it and put it in Marlin Brando's lap without a word.
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308points
#15
TIL early-20th-century actress, Maude Adams, wanted to do a film version of Peter Pan, but was against doing it in black-and-white. She began working with experts on those obstacles, i.e. lack of color film and inadequate lighting. She earned several electric-light patents in the 1930s.
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304points
#16
TIL in 1977, Ben Cohen was a struggling potter & Jerry Greenfield was getting rejected by medical schools. The pair decided to open a bagel shop, but the cost of bagel machines was too high. As a result, they enrolled in a $5 ice cream making course instead. A year later, they created Ben & Jerry's
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298points
#17
TIL of the Grand Hotel in Scarborough, England, which had 365 rooms for each day of the year, 52 chimneys for the weeks, 12 floors for months of the year, and was shaped in a V to represent Queen Victoria
298points
#18
TIL, the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea is a wildlife haven. While most natural wildlife and rare plants have been killed off in the South, the DMZ hasn’t been touched in over 60 years, which resulted in unique species of flora and fauna to flourish in this area.
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293points
#19
TIL when giraffes are born, they fall six feet on their head, but it's the fall that gets them to start breathing
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292points
#20
TIL Certain oak tree populations will synchronize to produce almost no acorns, only to rain them down excessively the following year, known as a "mast" year. The year preceding the mast year is thought to starve off the mammal populations feeding on the acorns.
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271points