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50 New ‘Today I Learned’ Facts That Prove It’s Never Too Late To Learn Something New
History,CuriositiesMAR 11, 2022

50 New ‘Today I Learned’ Facts That Prove It’s Never Too Late To Learn Something New

Denis Tymulis
Liucija Adomaite
Mindaugas Balčiauskas
Denis Tymulis, Liucija Adomaite and Mindaugas Balčiauskas
315
16
It’s always a good day to learn something new. And thanks to the abundance of information we are constantly bombarded with, both on social media and TV, we don’t need to lift a finger for it. Unless scrolling counts. But how many of these claims, arguments and statements we read are true and how many of them are bogus? After all, we’re constantly reminded to have an inner skeptic in charge of fact-checking things and taking them with a pinch of salt.
Alternatively, we can trust the Reddit powerhouse, everyone’s beloved destination for the most random facts, known as “Today I Learned.” With a mind-blowing 27.1 million members, it’s home to a seemingly never-ending collection of specific facts shared by people who just learned them and shared on there.
According to their rules, the sub does not accept facts that are “inaccurate/unverifiable/not supported by source” as well as posts that are “misleading claims and omit essential information.” They also say they don’t support opinions and subjective posts as well as posts that are too general.
So scroll down through the latest TIL selection below, and be sure to check out our previous posts with more random facts when you’re done here, here and here.

#1

50 New ‘Today I Learned’ Facts That Prove It’s Never Too Late To Learn Something New
TIL 2010 Vancouver luge gold medallist Felix Loch had his medal melted into 2 discs and gave one to the parents of a deceased competitor who died in a practice run on the day of the opening ceremony.
Nose_Beers_85
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597points

#2

50 New ‘Today I Learned’ Facts That Prove It’s Never Too Late To Learn Something New
TIL a female reporter attempted to recreate the famous novel "Around The World In 80 Days". Not only did she complete it with eight days to spare, she made a detour to interview Jules Verne, the original author.
res30stupid
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524points

#3

50 New ‘Today I Learned’ Facts That Prove It’s Never Too Late To Learn Something New
TIL Martin Luther King Jr was a huge fan of Star Trek. He loved that it showed a future with people of all colors working together in harmony. He bumped into Uhura, Nichelle Nichols, at a convention. She said she was quitting. She ended up staying after MLK urged her to, saying she was a role model.
SonOfQuora
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505points

Every fact you come across on the internet has to be taken with a pinch of salt. We all know that, but not many of us go forward and actually do the fact-checking. “Fact-checking is important because anyone can say anything on the internet and you want to know that the information you consume is grounded in reality,” Daniel Markuson, a cybersecurity expert at NordVPN, told Bored Panda.

"A general rule of thumb is to make sure that your news comes from established, well-known sources. These outlets get their information straight from primary sources and must uphold their reputation," he explained.

#4

50 New ‘Today I Learned’ Facts That Prove It’s Never Too Late To Learn Something New
TIL Hisako Koyama, a female Japanese astronomer who hand drew sunspots every day for more than 40 years. Her detailed sketches aid researchers in studying solar cycles and the sun's magnetic fields.
u/Specialist_Check
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469points

#5

50 New ‘Today I Learned’ Facts That Prove It’s Never Too Late To Learn Something New
TIL Leonard Nimoy refused to join Star Trek the Animated Series without George Takai and Nichelle Nichols claiming they were proof of ethic diversity in the 23rd century.
Aluliman
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456points

#6

50 New ‘Today I Learned’ Facts That Prove It’s Never Too Late To Learn Something New
TIL that since Brazil could not afford to send a team to the 1932 Olympics, they sent the athletes on a ship full of coffee. The athletes sold the coffee along the way to fund their journey.
frosted_bite
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430points

However, if you’re still not sure, Daniel's advice is to look into the author, research them, and make sure their credibility is up to par. "It is also important to weigh our own perception and not let our biases skew our understanding of events," he added.

It's no secret that social media helps to spread misinformation. The cybersecurity expert at NordVPN explained that it's because "the business models of the most popular social media platforms are based on increasing engagement. The core problem with this approach is that instead of focusing on providing their users with quality, fact-checked content, social media algorithms feed their users content that is most likely to increase likes, shares, and comments."

#7

50 New ‘Today I Learned’ Facts That Prove It’s Never Too Late To Learn Something New
TIL an FBI whistleblower reported multiple problems in forensic cases. After years of the FBI seeking to ruin him, his claims were investigated and a report showed that forensic hair analysis was flawed or inaccurate over 90% of the time.
marmorset
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401points

#8

50 New ‘Today I Learned’ Facts That Prove It’s Never Too Late To Learn Something New
TIL Thought destroyed by Nazis, a priceless mosaic owned by Roman emperor Caligula ended up as a coffee table for 50 years in a NYC apartment.
Specialist_Check
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398points

#9

50 New ‘Today I Learned’ Facts That Prove It’s Never Too Late To Learn Something New
TIL that breast milk can adapt to a babies' illness and produce more milk with illness-specific antibodies.
kimcpi
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393points

Turns out that "this usually leaves social media littered with posts that make bold and easy-to-digest statements and skip explaining the situation in detail—a perfect place for misinformation to proliferate." Daniel argues that most of the time the truth is messy and boring with many actors involved and interpretations of events available.

"On the other hand, rumors, bold claims, and simple fixes are easy to digest and entertaining. The attention-grabbing factor of misinformation combined with social media’s hunger for attention make them a pair made in heaven," he concluded.

#10

50 New ‘Today I Learned’ Facts That Prove It’s Never Too Late To Learn Something New
TIL that the work of Charles Drew, a pioneer in preserving blood, led to large-scale blood bank use, U.S. blood donations to Britons in WWII, and the use of bloodmobiles. He resigned as chief of the first American Red Cross blood bank over a policy that separated the blood of black and white people.
RedditPrat
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382points

#11

50 New ‘Today I Learned’ Facts That Prove It’s Never Too Late To Learn Something New
TIL that Loving Day in June celebrates the day that Interracial Marriage became legal in the US.
sephstorm
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373points

#12

50 New ‘Today I Learned’ Facts That Prove It’s Never Too Late To Learn Something New
TIL Emerson Romero was a silent film actor who was deaf. When movies with sound were invented, deaf actors got less roles and the intertitle text was removed. This led him to make an early form of movie captioning in 1947 so that movies would still be accessible to deaf people.
dilettantedebrah
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360points

#13

50 New ‘Today I Learned’ Facts That Prove It’s Never Too Late To Learn Something New
TIL of The Great Hanoi Rat Massacre of 1902. The French wanted rats exterminated from the sewer system. They set a bounty for each dead rat tail. Thousands of tails were submitted per day but the rat problem only grew worse. They found the hunters were breeding, not hunting, rats for their tails.
grandlewis
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354points

#14

50 New ‘Today I Learned’ Facts That Prove It’s Never Too Late To Learn Something New
TIL that to save the Hawaiian culture and people from disappearing, Kalākaua, the last king of the Hawaiian kingdom, went on a world tour in 1881, and travelled to Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and the United States, and he became the first reigning monarch to circumnavigate the globe.
Jay21-1-10
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350points

#15

50 New ‘Today I Learned’ Facts That Prove It’s Never Too Late To Learn Something New
TIL that 1604, King James I wrote ‘A Counterblaste to Tobacco’, in which he described smoking as a ‘custome lothesome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs.
vrphotosguy55
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325points

#16

50 New ‘Today I Learned’ Facts That Prove It’s Never Too Late To Learn Something New
TIL that Mississippi did not make child-selling illegal until 2009, after a woman tried to sell her granddaughter for $2,000 and a car and it was discovered that there was no law to punish her under.
ob-With-One-B
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324points

#17

50 New ‘Today I Learned’ Facts That Prove It’s Never Too Late To Learn Something New
TIL that in the 1950s, a psychiatrist had three paranoid schizophrenic patients who each believed they were Jesus Christ. He put them in a room together to see if their beliefs would change after confronting each other. They did not, in fact, change their beliefs but each individually came to the conclusion that the other two men were insane. They made a movie about it, called Three Christs.
brother_
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315points

#18

50 New ‘Today I Learned’ Facts That Prove It’s Never Too Late To Learn Something New
TIL Thankful Villages (also known as Blessed Villages) are those few villages in Britain to which suffered no casualties in the First World War. These villages had lost no men in the war because all those who left to serve came home again when war ended.
Four_Minute_Mile
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300points

#19

50 New ‘Today I Learned’ Facts That Prove It’s Never Too Late To Learn Something New
TIL Black Panthers are not a real species. They are jaguars and leopards who have “Melanism”, which causes them to have black skin. It's the opposite effect of having albinism.
VinumNoctua
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299points

#20

50 New ‘Today I Learned’ Facts That Prove It’s Never Too Late To Learn Something New
TIL that Willie O'Ree, the first black man to play in the NHL, was blind in one eye. It was caused by a ricocheting puck that hit him in the face when he was 18 and he kept it a secret for his entire 21-year career.
FuriouSherman
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270points
315
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