You deserve to do something nice for yourselves today, pandas. That might include taking a long, hot bath, doing some relaxing yoga or even exercising your brain by learning something new. And if you don’t have time for a bath or a yoga mat on hand at the moment, why not take ten minutes to pick up some fascinating, fun facts?
We’ve taken another trip to one of our favorite places on the internet, the Today I Learned subreddit, to find out some information that you probably didn’t learn in school but you might still want to know! So enjoy finding out more about history, animals and even our own species, and be sure to upvote the facts that you won’t ever forget!
#1
TIL about a cat named Room 8 that lived in a public school for 16 years. During his time their he would disappear during the summer and return, like clockwork on the first day of school. He became so well known that poems and songs were sung about him.
443points
#2
TIL elderly pedestrians in Singapore get more time to cross the road at traffic lights. By taping their concession card on the crosswalk button, the green man stays lit for up to 13 seconds longer.
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435points
#3
TIL Ubisoft offered to share their detailed 3D model of Notre Dame from Assassin's Creed: Unity, some 5,000 hours of research, with the French government reconstruction effort after the fire in 2019.
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434points
#4
TIL the Kootenai Indian Tribe of Idaho and Montana harvests millions of dollars of sturgeon caviar a year, but put all the eggs back in the rivers. They are desperately try to save the shrinking white sturgeon population which they believe are “sacred messengers.”
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400points
#5
TIL : about the game "Foldit", a puzzle game about protein folding. In 2011, its gamers helped decipher a protein of a HIV-like virus, solving a scientific problem that went unsolved for 15 years in as little as 10 days.
377points
#6
TIL Highway hypnosis, also known as white line fever, is an altered mental state in which a person can drive a car, truck, or other automobile great distances, responding to external events in the expected, safe, and correct manner with no recollection of having consciously done so.
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368points
#7
TIL that sharks don’t make sounds. Across 400-500 species, no one has ever found an organ even capable of producing sound.
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327points
#8
TIL that just before Laika went into space, one of the scientists using her for testing brought her home to play with his children. Knowing that she would not survive her journey.
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313points
#9
TIL in 2001, Mattel made a vibrating Harry Potter broomstick that led to many questionable Amazon user reviews. They discontinued the toy after adult stores in Times Square started selling them for twice their original retail price.
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288points
#10
TIL when Captain Francesco Schettino was asked why he abandoned the sinking Costa Concordia cruise ship in 2012 while the ship’s passengers were either dying or trying to escape, his excuse was that he accidentally fell into a lifeboat. He received 16 years in prison for his role in the incident.
282points
#11
TIL It has been scientifically proven that stroking a cat can lower one's blood pressure.
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262points
#12
TIL that three years after winning gold at the 2004 Olympics, wrestler Rulon Gardner and two friends’ plane crashed into Lake Powell Utah. The three men swam an hour to the shore through 44F (7C) degree water to the shore and waited all night without shelter for rescue. All three men survived.
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260points
#13
TIL that there is a type of octopus, an argonaut, where the male fills its sex organ with sperm, then rips it off and presents it to a female.
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259points
#14
TIL about the "Tanganyika-Laughter Epidemic". A student in 1962 in Tanzania started laughing in a school in Kashasha. The laughter quickly spread to hundreds of people, causing schools to close for months. Researchers believe it was caused by stress, social tensions. No official explanation was given.
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257points
#15
TIL that, on 16 November, 1949, students in Ghent (Belgium) stormed the medieval castle, lowered the portcullis and threw fruit from the walls at the police to protest a new tax on beer. The event is still commemorated yearly by the city as the greatest student prank in its history.
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252points
#16
TIL that when Johannes Rebmann, the first European to see Mount Kilimanjaro, published his discovery in 1849, it was dismissed as a malaria-induced hallucination because it was believed that snow at this latitude was impossible. It took 12 more years for scholars to accept the mountain's existence.
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250points
#17
TIL that not only are the mountains on Saturns moon Titan named after mountains and ranges from works J.R.R. Tolkien, but the plains are named after locations from the Dune Universe.
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239points
#18
TIL the Black Death contributed greatly to the rise of the British Pub and pub culture. Thanks to the plague, scarcity of labor greatly improved the standard of living for peasants, who in turn spent their extra money on beer.
236points
#19
TIL. MSG isn’t bad for you and it’s bad reputation stemmed from what’s called the Chinese Restaurant Syndrome.
225points
#20
TIL: about Nebraska's "safe haven" law that didn't have an age limit to drop off unwanted babies. A wave of children, many teenagers with behavioral issues, were dropped off. It has since been amended.
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223points