TIL Post-it Notes exist because Art Fry, a man in a church choir, wanted bookmarks that wouldn't fall out of his songbook. He used a "failed" glue that 3M colleague Spencer Silver invented in 1968, wh
TIL that the original run of X-Men comics failed to produce the sales numbers Marvel wanted, and so were essentially cancelled in 1970, with the comic only publishing reprints between then and the rel
TIL that the Spanish name for the Falklands, Islas Malvinas was derived from the French name Îles Malouines when the French explorer Louis-Antoine de Bougainville departed from Saint-Malo in Brittany
TIL that Korea was using movable metal type to print books more than 70 years before Gutenberg's printing press—and the oldest surviving metal-type book was printed in Korea in 1377.
TIL that gasoline in Brazil must have a minimum 32% of ethanol blend from sugarcane. By comparison, gasoline in the US typically only has 10% ethanol. The increase from 30 to 32% in the ethanol blend
TIL Abraham Lincoln was once challenged to a duel. Given the choice of weapons, the 6’4” Lincoln chose enormous cavalry broadswords, then demonstrated his advantage by chopping down a tree branch abov
TIL Robert Rodriguez had to work to convince studio backers to let him make the family in Spy Kids Hispanic. Backers said the movie would attract a limited audience and asked, "Why don't you just make
TIL spider fighting is widespread in Florida prisons. Three prisoners fought over the theft one such spider, resulting in a life-threatening skull injury for one inmate.
TIL about the Right-Tail or Burnt Popcorn Illusion: Where rare outcomes make the average much higher than the typical result. If 60 popcorn kernels each have a 1/30 chance to pop per second, 52 likely
TIL that an estimated 41% of women in the UK consume alcohol at some point during pregnancy, compared with 15% in the US. Despite this, Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder is thought to be substantially u
TIL In 2020, to curb obesity, Mexico enacted a law requiring warning labels on the front of food packages that contain "excess" sugar, calories, sodium, or saturated fat by Official Mexican Standards.
TIL Thomas Edison created a test for prospective employees that was so difficult his own son, an MIT graduate, failed it. When the questions were published, Albert Einstein failed it too.
TIL that between the 11th and 19th centuries, Japanese Buddhist monks practiced Sokushinbutsu, a ritual in which they mummified themselves over the course of a thousand days. They believed that succes
TIL before he wrote Don Quixote, Cervantes was captured by corsairs on his way home from Naples and spent nearly five years enslaved in Algiers. He made four separate escape attempts before a charity
TIL China's Grand Canal and its branches total about 3,000 km of waterways, with the first works dating to the 6th century BC. By the 13th century it formed an inland network of over 2,000 km of man-m
TIL that early Wahhabis banned modern technology as forbidden Innovations. When Ibn Saud later allowed such technology, the hardline Ikhwan rebelled; their defeat at Sabilla (1929) contributed in the
TIL Adolphe Saalfeld, a perfumer aboard the Titanic, left 65 vials of fragrance samples behind when he escaped in a lifeboat. Salvagers recovered 62 of them from the wreck in 2000, still sealed after
