“Today I Learned”: 40 Lesser-Known Things About The World That Should Be Common Knowledge (New Pics)

TIL Robin Williams improv was so good in FernGully the director tripled his character’s screen time for the final cut.

TIL that we start forgetting early childhood memories at around age 7.

TIL Japan has become infested with North American raccoons after an anime based on the book Rascal aired in 1977 and caused thousands of raccoons to be imported as pets only to be released into the wild.

TIL the Myers-Briggs has no scientific basis whatsoever.

TIL 70% of people in the world do not use toilet paper.

TIL that bioluminescence in fireflies is nearly 100 percent efficient, meaning little energy is wasted to produce their light.

TIL that the actor who played Darth Vader, David Prowse, was banned from attending official Star Wars events because he leaked too many plot details.

TIL the crews of Apollo 11, 12, and 14 had to spend 3 weeks in quarantine after returning to Earth because of the possibility that they might spread contagions from the moon.

TIL That in case of emergency in a railroad crossing, instead of dialing 911, we should first look out for a blue and white sign that has a phone number that will get you in touch with the railroad dispatcher, who can radio the engineers of nearby trains to immediately stop short of that crossing.

TIL The prototype of the Rolls Royce Ghost was so quiet inside that it made test drivers sick. The engineers had to remove some of the noise-isolating material, and create seats that vibrated at specific frequencies to introduce some noise into the interior.

TIL about Mrs. Winslow's Soothing Syrup, a medicine used in the early 1900s to quiet infants and teething children. Popular in the US and UK it took twenty years of doctors' complaints before it was withdrawn from the market for being a "baby killer." The main ingredient was morphine.

TIL as a research student, Lawrence Bragg figured out how to use X-ray to study the atomic structure. His breakthrough discovery earned him the Nobel Prize in Physics at age 25.

TIL the Japanese turned the third of their superbattleships (after Yamato and Musashi) into the largest aircraft carrier ever built at the time. After four years of construction and enormous cost, she left the shipyard and was immediately sunk by a submarine.

TIL Charles Dickens had a talking pet raven named Grip, who terrorized his dog, buried valuables in the yard, and died eating "a pound or two" of lead paint. As a character in one of his novels, Grip is believed to have inspired Poe's famous poem, and is on display in a Philadelphia public library.

TIL that South Korea's CIA recruited a suicide squad to kill North Korea's dictator, Kim Il Sung. The squad mutinied, killed their commanders, hijacked a bus to Seoul, and were blown up by their own military. The survivors were then executed.

TIL that the Fahrenheit scale was standardized 18 years before Celsius. The world switch due to the British Empire. The United States is actually using the earlier standard.

TIL Japan has used history textbook that contained references to the Nanjing Massacre, anti-Japanese resistance movements in Korea, forced suicide in Okinawa, comfort women, and Unit 731 since the mid 1990s.

TIL beneath the Puerto Rico Trench is a mass so dense it has a gravitational pull on the surface of the ocean, causing it to dip somewhat. The Trench is also associated with the most negative gravity anomaly on earth, -380 milliGal, which indicates the presence of an active downward force.

TIL Crypto.com mistakenly sent a customer $10.5 million instead of an $100 refund by typing the account number as the refund amount. It took Crypto.com 7 months to notice the mistake, they are now suing the customer.

TIL that King Alfonso XIII of Spain,was known as "the Playboy king"and considered the pioneer of pornographic cinema in Spain.He commissioned pornographic films considered immoral and degenerate, including sexual relationships involving Catholic priests, and his passion "women with enormous breasts".