40 Really Cool And Interesting Facts, As Shared By The ‘Today I Learned’ Online Community

For the film Stargate, Kurt Russell was paid twice his going rate because he was the only actor at the time to have "zero unlikability" in a global poll.

In 1930, Chandra, an Indian student showed mathematically that massive stars explode into a supernova and then collapse down into neutron stars, or black holes. Before that Scientists assumed that all stars collapsed into white dwarfs. Chandra's theory was ridiculed as 'absurd'

In 1996, a Hong Kong ganster "Big spender" kidnapped the son of the richest man in Asia and demanded a ransom of $160 million for his return. After receiving the money, the gangster later phoned up and asked for advice on how to invest the money.

In 1966, Bill Cosby tried to get 16 year old folk singer Janis Ian blacklisted from tv because he thought she was a lesbian and therefore unsuited for family entertainment.

The Seiryu Miharashi station in Japan is a train station with no entrances or exits, no roads or paths to connect it, all it serves is a platform for the train passengers to step out and admire the valley

In 1927, during the worst flood in the history of the Mississippi River Valley, Herbert Hoover and the Red Cross set up "concentration camps" comprised of African Americans forced to work at gunpoint on the levee, and created a media campaign to cover it up.

In east Africa, movies are often watched with a "VJ" or "video joker" who provides live narration over the movie for translation, contextualization or comedy purposes.

Introduction of iodized salt in 1920s increased national IQ average by 3.5 points in a decade and in certain states which had high levels of iodine deficiency previously, saw avg IQ increase as much as 15 points within the first decade.

Masks on airplanes generate oxygen by triggering a chemical reaction. If pressure in the cabin is disturbed and masks drop, tugging the mask causes a firing pin to ignite a small explosion in an ‘O2 candle’ where Sodium Chlorate and Potassium Percholorate combine to make Oxygen gas.

That there were only 66 years between the first ever powered flight and the moon landing. The Wright Brothers successfully flew a plane for the first time in 1903; in 1969 Neil Armstrong was the first man on the moon.

In 1995 a policy known as “the Wall" was created. It discouraged info sharing between the CIA and FBI, playing a critical role in the inability to stop 9/11. It got so bad agents played a CD with Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall" into the phone as they were told their access was denied.

A British man was surprised at being urgently contacted by the NHS about his health, when they calculated his BMI as being 28,000. They'd written his 6'2" height as being 6.2cm tall

The same enzyme that makes apples and potatoes turn brown is also responsible for tanning in humans.

Arthur Tudor, the older brother of Henry VIII, exchanged letters with his fiancée, Catherine of Aragon, in Latin. When they met in person they were unable to communicate however, as they had mastered different pronunciations of the language.

Bronze medal Olympian, UFC champion and WWE wrestler Ronda Rousey used to be a moderator on a Pokemon forum, in her bio it said "I also spend a lot of time doing judo... right now I'm ranked #1 under 20, if you don't believe me look it up"

There was an infamous game of roulette played in Monte-Carlo on August 18, 1913, where the ball fell on black 26 times in a row. Gamblers lost millions expecting it to land on red along the way, making "the gambler's fallacy" famous.

In 2018, a woman accidentally paid a Swiss cafe $7709 for coffee because she entered her PIN number as the dollar amount. When she called to get the money back, nobody answered because the cafe had filed for bankruptcy.

There is a breed of horse called the Yakutian that is native to Siberia. Bulkier than other horse breeds, it has a extremely long hair for its coat and can withstand temperatures as low a -70C (-94F)

The Tour de France has a team that drives each days route and turns genitals graffitied on the road into owls and butterflies.

Thomas Linley was called "The English Mozart". Mozart called him "a true genius" and said "he would have been one of the greatest", but he drowned in a lake at age 22 and most of compositions were lost or burned in a fire.