Grab your thinking caps, dear Pandas, it’s time to expand our minds! It’s time for another loving rendition of ‘Today I Learned,’ a list of all the cool and interesting (and really surprising!) things that the people of the internet learned about the world recently.
From science to history to everything and anything in between and more, the TIL community over on Reddit has got it all. And with so many curious people in the world, the subreddit keeps on expanding, now closing on a whopping 26 million members. Need some more yummy facts about everything and anything? Check out Bored Panda’s latest lovingly-crafted TIL articles here and here, as well as here. Got some cool trivia tidbits to share with the rest of the class? You can tell us all about them in the comment section.
Learning new things isn’t as easy as we’d like as we grow up. But it’s far from impossible! All it takes a spark of curiosity and the willingness to be open-minded and humble.
#21
TIL that barns are red because farmers made their own sealant using linseed oil and rust. The rust protects the wood from algae and fungal growth but also colors the mixture red.
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275points
#22
TIL For millennia, Europeans did not know where birds went in Winter time. The mystery was partly solved in 1822, when a German hunter shot down a stork. The stork had a 80cm long Central African spear impaled in its neck. This provided the first evidence that they migrated to Africa.
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270points
#23
TIL that Thomas Edison proposed to his future wife in morse code, she accepted in the same way
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265points
#24
Today I learned IKEA is an acronym which stands for Ingvar Kamprad Elmtaryd Agunnaryd, which is the founder’s name, farm where he grew up, and hometown.
249points
#25
TIL about the mysterious worldwide epidemic of Encephalitis lethargica. The disease attacks the brain, leaving some victims in a statue-like condition, speechless and motionless. Between 1915 and 1926, 500,000 dead or incapacitated from it. It disappeared as mysteriously as it came in to the world.
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243points
#26
TIL just before lethal hypothermia, a person will undress themselves because they perceive themselves to be burning up when indeed they're freezing (paradoxical undressing). Consequently people frozen to death are often found naked and misidentified as a victim of a violent crime.
241points
#27
TIL the term "crimes against humanity" was first used to describe the atrocities committed by Leopold the 2nd of Belgium in the Congo Free State, a regime so brutal that the mercenaries hired by Leopold had to show a human hand for every bullet they used to prove the bullet wasnt used for hunting.
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232points
#28
TIL that the Venus flytrap naturally grows in very few areas in the Carolinas, so park rangers have to keep most of their grow sites a secret to keep them safe from poachers.
226points
#29
TIL In 1980 a dingo ate an Australian couple's baby while camping, causing the mother to sentenced to life in prison for murder. Three years later, the babies clothes were found near a dingo lair.
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225points
#30
TIL in 1998, a married couple was left behind during a diving trip to the Great Barrier Reef. Two days passed before anyone realized what had happened. Despite a 5-day search, the couple was never found. A dive slate was later recovered which read "... rescue us before we die..."
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221points
#31
TIL the Adamites were a 2nd century Christian sect that sought to re-create the innocence of the Garden of Eden. To this end they called their church “Paradise”, practiced nudism, rejected marriage and claimed they could do whatever they wanted because they had no knowledge of good/evil.
221points
#32
TIL despite modern connotations of death as evil, the Greek god Hades was actually more altruistically inclined. Very few individual aspects of his personality were recorded, as Greeks refrained from giving him much thought to avoid attracting his attention.
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215points
#33
TIL that "Jazz" is statistically the hardest word to guess in hangman. It has to do with it being a short word, having only one vowel, and using "j" and "z"---letters that people rarely guess in hangman.
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214points
#34
TIL that "ringworm" is a fungal infection and no actual worms are involved
209points
#35
TIL that the Bermuda triangle isn't statistically more dangerous than almost any other place on the world's oceans per capita, the traffic there is just much higher.
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196points
#36
TIL after their characters unsuccessfully flirted in Jurassic Park, Jeff Goldblum and Laura Dern actually dated and got engaged
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194points
#37
TIL In 2019, Pope Francis approved changing the lord's prayer. The phrase “lead us not into temptation” changed to “do not let us fall into temptation”. He said the original was a bad translation because it suggested God caused the temptation.
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183points
#38
TIL that Michael Jackson suffered from severe insomnia and did not get any real sleep for 60 days prior to his death. Instead, his personal doctor had been putting him under general anestheisa every night.
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178points
#39
TIL R.E.M. singer Michael Stipe nearly died of scarlet fever in 1962, of hypothermia in 1974, and of a lightning strike in 1986.
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177points
#40
TIL that Sid Meier (of Sid Meier's Civilization and Sid Meier's Pirates!) began placing his name in the title of his games because of a suggestion made by Robin Williams in the 1980's
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167points
For those interested in intriguing wedding stories, it's worth noting how unusual dynamics can impact ceremonies. In one instance, financial disagreements between families led to wedding guests being treated unequally based on stamps on their hands. Such instances can serve as a precautionary tale for managing family finances during weddings.
To delve deeper into wedding complications, consider learning more about how financial dynamics can shape wedding experiences by exploring the topic of wedding financial challenges here.