People Share 27 “Today I Learned” Facts, From Shocking To Cool Or Even Funny

Heath Ledger refused to present the Oscars in 2007 after he and Jake Gyllenhaal were asked to make fun of their "Brokeback Mountain" characters' romance.

During the siege of Leningrad during World War II, 28 scientists chose to die of hunger while protecting the seed vault at the Vavilov Institute rather than eating the seeds.

The sound a whip makes when you crack it is caused by a sonic boom created when the tip of a whip moves faster than the speed of sound. The whip was also the first man made object to break the sound barrier.

In 200 CE, Roman Emperor Septimius Severus banned all female gladiatorial combat, reportedly after hearing such lewd jokes directed at women in an athletic contest that he feared the sport bred disrespect for all women.

During WW2 the Nazis spent the modern day equivalent of 100 million usd to make a underground base in Poland which saw little to no use. Soon after building it they lost the war, and it is now one of the largest bat habitats in Europe.

The loudest shout ever recorded was by a primary school teacher who yelled ‘quiet!’ It was clocked at 121.7 decibels and the record has stood for 30 years.

In the Movie "Scream" (1996) there is a section in the credits saying "No Thanks whatsoever to the Santa Rosa city school district governing board" Santa Rosa revoked permissions to film there last minute and cost the production 350,000$.

The "S" in "Harry S. Truman" wasn't an abbreviation. The dude's middle name was literally just the letter S.

A 2022 California Supreme Court decision allowed bumble bees to be considered a protected species because they met the state’s legal definition of a “fish”.

A clown saved 300 children during the deadliest avalanche in history. Only 400 people survived out of around 18,000 in the town of Yungay, Peru. The children were attending a circus and a clown led them to higher ground moments before the avalanche destroyed the entire town.

In world war 2, English soldiers would use passwords that had sounds that the language of the people they where fighting against did not have, so that they could tell if an unidentified person was an enemy soldier tying to infiltrate them by if they said these sounds correctly.

US president Benjamin Harrison was widowed while in office in 1892. Four years later, Harrison married his dead wife's niece and had a daughter with her. His adult children who were around 40 years old, were horrified that their father married their cousin and didn't attend the wedding.

Tom Sawyer author Mark Twain invented the clasps commonly used on women’s bras.

Dictator Muammar Gaddafi had a strange obsession with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. He had Libya's most famous composer write her a song called "Black Flower in the White House." A photo album full of pictures of her was also found next to his bed by opposition fighters.

Pirates and buccaneers sometimes engaged in "matelotage", a practice in which male couples would agree to share their incomes and inherit their partner's property in the case of their death.

The native language of the volcanic island Manam Motu has no words for cardinal directions (North, East, West, South). Instead, it uses polar coördinates—with words meaning “towards the volcano”, ”towards the sea”, “clockwise around the volcano”, and “counterclockwise around the volcano”.

Four of the last 7 Illinois Govenors have been jailed.

During World War II, US comedian Redd Foxx dodged the draft by eating half a bar of soap before his physical, a trick that resulted in heart palpitations.

Earth's magnetic field was approximately twice as strong in Roman times as it is now.

In 1853, linguist and explorer Richard Francis Burton disguised himself as a Muslim and made the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca which is required of all Muslims. He later wrote a book about his experiences.