TIL that Gustave Eiffel was of German descent. He was born Alexandre Gustave Bonickhausen dit Eiffel. Eiffel got the name from the Eifel mountains in the area where his paternal family was from. He ch
TIL of the Grāpple, a discontinued brand of apples soaked in concentrated grape flavouring (methyl anthralinate) to artificially make the flesh taste like grapes.
TIL that blue jay feathers contain no blue pigment. Their color comes from microscopic structures that scatter blue light. Crushing the feather destroys those structures, causing the blue appearance t
TIL about the "Latin Verse Machine", an invention built in 1845 by an English grocer, John Clark, which generated mechanically produced poetry without any human involvement.
TIL that in 1872, two conmen planted $20,000 worth of gemstones in Wyoming and fooled wealthy investors into believing they’d discovered a massive diamond field.
TIL that John Wayne Bobbitt, after his highly publicized divorce from wife Lorena, once worked as a wedding chapel minister for the Universal Life Church in Las Vegas.
TIL: There is a river called "Another River" in Alaska. Another River is a river located within Lake Clark National Park and Preserve in the Kenai Peninsula Borough, Alaska, in the United States. "Ano
TIL that Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack (2001) was originally pitched as starring Varan, Anguirus and Baragon as the enemy monsters. Interference from Toho forced th
TIL that scientists will sometimes use single-cell hybrid human-hamster cells called "Humsters" in order to avoid the legal constraints imposed on using unhybridized embryonic human stem cells. Humste
TIL Jamestown in 1607 was the first permanent English settlement in the Americas. By the time the Mayflower pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620, Jamestown already formed a state legislature and h
TIL that mushrooms and crabs use the exact same base material (chitin) for structure. Mushrooms stay soft and edible because their chitin is mixed with flexible proteins, while crustaceans use mineral
TIL the 50 million Francs of the Louisiana purchase were used to finance preparations for a 200k man army to invade Great Britain. The United States had partly funded the purchase by a loan from Barin
TIL that the ESA–NASA spacecraft SOHO was designed to study the Sun, but has helped discover over 5,000 comets, most of them spotted by volunteers searching through its images online.
TIL that Dillon, South Carolina, was once known as the "Wedding Capital of the East" because South Carolina allowed people as young as 14 to get married without other requirements.
TIL in 1923, after bandits kidnapped a group of foreigners in China, two American journalists arranged a messenger service for the hostages. They commissioned locally printed stamps reading “Pao Tzu K
TIL that from 1900–1925, motorists entering the Swiss canton of Graubünden had to turn off their engines and have their cars towed by horses or oxen. This was because voters used direct democracy to b
TIL even though lasers are usually associated with heating things up (e.g. laser cutting), they can also be used for cooling. Laser cooling allows to cool atoms or molecules almost to absolute zero.
TIL that ancient animal engravings in Saudi Arabia's Nefud Desert are only visible for about 90 minutes each morning, when the rising sun illuminates the rock at just the right angle.
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
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
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
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
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
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.
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
TIL that during the Great Depression the Federal Art Project paid artists to paint over 18,000 watercolors of everyday objects to preserve the "national, ancestral aesthetic" of America.
TIL that a speed dating event in Japan used "techno-cupid" robots to conduct small talk for single participants while the couples sat in complete silence, allowing automated wingmen to brag about thei
