"True education is a kind of never-ending story – a matter of continual beginnings, of habitual fresh starts, of persistent newness," said J.R.R. Tolkien. And it's true: there's no age cutoff for continually learning new things about the world. We can discover something new and interesting every single day.
This process has never been easier thanks to the Internet. We can learn new fun facts or interesting things from any field: history, languages, math – you name it. The Today I Learned subreddit is a wonderful place to share such not-so-common tidbits of knowledge with others. So check out our new selection of fascinating facts, pandas, and upvote those you find the most interesting.
Bored Panda reached out to two podcasts that are about interesting facts. The first creator is Steve Silverman, author of the Useless Information podcast. Steve shares interesting, lesser-known stories from history. The second trio that was kind enough to share their expertise was the creators of the I Should Have Known podcast – Tanner, Andi and Sups. You can find short interviews with them below!
#1
TIL Michelin started reviewing restaurants so people would travel farther and wear out their tires, increasing their sales.
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2points
#2
TIL: In 1956, France banned the serving of alcohol to children under the age of 14 in the school canteens. Prior to that, school children had the right to drink half a litre of wine, cider or beer with their meals. In 1981 France implemented a total alcohol ban in the country’s schools.
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1point
#3
TIL that an unplugged microwave carries enough residual current to kill you, even if it's been unplugged for months. So never try to repair a broken microwave unless you know how to discharge the capacitor
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1point
#4
TIL that Skoda test their car horns 150,000 times for the European car market. For the Indian market the horns are tested 500,000 times due to the increased use of car horns in India. One study carried out at major intersections in Indian cities found that a horn sounds every three seconds.
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1point
#5
TIL one of the co-creators of Keurig machines was diagnosed with caffeine poisoning due to his daily 30 to 40 cup coffee habit.
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1point
#6
TIL that instead of using his Make-A-Wish for something for himself, 13-Year-old Abraham Olagbegi used his wish to feed the homeless in his neighborhood for a year.
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0points
#7
TIL: A woman born with birth defects caused by Chernobyl including 6 toes, webbed fingers, no thumbs, leg 15cm shorter than the other, and missing some organs, won a gold medal in the paralympics for cross-country skiiing.
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0points
#8
TIL in 1963, a 16-year-old sent a 4-question survey to 150 well-known authors (75 of which replied) in order to prove to his English tutor that writers don't intentionally add symbolic content to their books.
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0points
#9
TIL Aretha Franklin required that she be paid in cash before any performance. The cash went into her handbag and the handbag either stayed with her security team or would rest on the piano during her onstage performance.
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0points
#10
TIL A hiker was lost on a mountain for 24 hours and ignored calls, texts, and voicemail messages from rescuer teams because he didn’t recognize the phone number.
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0points
#11
TIL Ernie Hudson, who played Winston Zeddemore in the Ghostbusters movies, was rejected from a role in the Ghostbusters cartoons because they thought he didn't sound like Winston Zeddemore.
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0points
#12
TIL that in his final years as US president, Woodrow Wilson was too sick to govern. His wife Edith kept his sickness secret, taking over so many duties she was essentially president. She hid Wilson's paralysis by covering his left side with a blanket.
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0points
#13
TIL Rockstar hired real-life gang members and ex-convicts in GTA V to voice some of the characters. They also gave them the freedom to improvise the script and say what they would say in real life, to make the dialogue more realistic and authentic.
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0points
#14
TIL Winston Churchill had a doctor's note to drink "unlimited" alcohol in prohibition America (1932).
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0points
#15
TIL A breakthrough in kidney stone treatment will allow them to be expelled without invasive surgery, using a handheld device. NASA has been funding the technology for 10 years, and it's one of the last significant issues in greenlighting human travel to Mars.
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0points
#16
TIL average onset of menstruation for girls in 1840 was age 17. In 2000 it was 12 years old.
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0points
#17
TIL calories in food are measured by exploding a dehydrated food in an oxygen filled canister surrounded by water. The explosion of the food item gives off energy that heats the surrounding water. The increase in temperature of the water is how we calculate calories.
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0points
#18
TIL in the 1980s, NASA had a 1-900 number which charged $2 for the first minute and $.45 for each additional minute. It allowed callers to listen in on a mission status report and mid-flight press conferences, and thousands of them heard the Challenger explosion in real-time.
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0points
#19
TIL the sun loses over 4 million tons of mass every second as energy.
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0points
#20
TIL Tina Fey got her chin scar at age 5 when a stranger randomly entered her yard while she was playing and slashed her face.
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0points