TIL that in 1992, Hoover UK offered two free round-trip flights to the US to anyone who bought £100 of vacuum cleaners. Over 200,000 people qualified upon realizing the vacuums cost less than the tick
TIL that the Eiffel Tower was originally meant to be temporary, to last 20 years then dismantled. Artists petitioned against the construction of the tower due to it being "useless and monstrous."
TIL about the "Ipuwer Papyrus", a poem written by someone named Ipuwer, describing social disorders occuring in Egypt at the time. The papyrus has been used by some as evidence of the Exodus, claiming
TIL about the Bouba/Kiki Effect where most people associate certain sounds with certain shapes. This is consistent across languages and is related to how we describe flavors with sound and emotions wi
Keeping jumping genes in place: New role for protein complex discovered. New research, led by Penn State scientists and published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, has identified a new role for
About 1 in 4 people with depression may have a ‘body clock’ type, like being stuck in permanent jet lag: late sleepers, tired mornings, worse in certain seasons. Across 11,380 people, this group got l
A study of 2,587 adults found that AI-generated stories were rated as more engaging and higher quality than human-written fiction, yet readers preferred stories labeled as human-written. Participants
TIL in 1911, South Africa authorized a cloak and dagger expedition to smuggle prize "Barbary" ostriches out of French West Africa. Fearing American spies would steal the lucrative feather trade secret
A 1970s heart treatment that squeezes your legs with inflatable cuffs improved memory and thinking in 84% of people with early Alzheimer’s in a 190-person trial. Most patients actually got better than
TIL about the Dreadnought Hoax. Horace de Vere Cole and 5 friends, including writer Virginia Woolf, pretended to be Abyssinian (Ethiopian) royals and boarded HMS Dreadnought. It was done at the behest
TIL in South Korea, murdering one's spouse's parents or grandparents carries harsher punishment than murdering one's spouse. This controversial law was upheld by the Constitutional Court of Korea in a
A randomized clinical trial found that children whose mothers took phosphatidylcholine, a form of choline found naturally in foods, had fewer social withdrawal problems and scored higher on cognitive
TIL laetrile, also marketed as “vitamin B-17,” showed no meaningful benefit in a National Cancer Institute clinical study of 175 evaluable cancer patients, and all patients had disease progression wit
Telling people online they eat meat because they don't care about the planet mostly makes them defensive, not ready to change. Saying they just don't know how to cook plant-based meals got less pushba
TIL the playground equipment 'monkey bars' are misnamed and would be better named gibbon bars, as the arm-over-arm movement on them (brachiation) is not something monkeys can actually do. Gibbons are
TIL that Međurečje is Bosnia and Herzegovina's only exclave; home to 173 residents, it is entirely surrounded by Serbia and is actually administered by the Serbian government.
TIL that Charles Lindbergh, famous for his aviation achievements, helped develop a glass pump that kept an entire thyroid gland alive outside the body for up to 21 days in the 1930s
TIL until 1933–when a deflated balloon caused an airplane to crash—the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons would be released into the sky where they’d eventually burst.
TIL in 1964, Hollywood starlet Jayne Mansfield recorded an album called Shakespeare, Tchaikovsky & Me, reciting Shakespeare and other poets over Tchaikovsky’s music. The cover featured Mansfield barel
A new study suggests that physically petting your own dog prepares the body to handle subsequent stressors with calmer brain and heart responses, whereas simply sitting near, talking to, or making eye
In teenagers (mean age 12.6 years) one additional serve of any type of fruit each day was associated with a 13% lower risk of depression and a 7% lower risk of anxiety over the study period, according
TIL car manufacturers have dedicated teams that design sounds like seat belt chimes and warning alerts, even testing different sounds on drivers to determine how pleasant or annoying they are.
New research finds that infants share about 35% of their gut microbial species with their mothers, with more sharing occurring during vaginal birth than C-section delivery. Findings could help researc
TIL that Toshiro Mifune, best known for samurai films he made with director Akira Kurosawa, was a Japanese Methodist Christian. Kurosawa helped convince his girlfriend's Buddhist parents to allow her
TIL the 4th atomic bomb ever detonated had a picture of actress Rita Hayworth on it. Before the 1946 test Hayworth said she hoped her daughter could someday tell her own daughter that “grandmother’s p
TIL scientists used 3D imaging and fluorescent biosensors to observe living plant guard cells as stomata open, revealing that the vacuole drives the volume changes needed to open these microscopic por
Water May Play a Hidden Role in the Spread of Alzheimer’s Disease. The Movement of Toxic Amyloid-Beta Proteins Found That Water-Related Processes May Help Explain How Alzheimer’s Pathology Spreads Bet
