TIL that the Menendez brothers are visible in the background of a 1990 Mark Jackson basketball card, having bought courtside tickets during a lavish spending spree following the murder of their parent
TIL a 1963 Barbie outfit "Barbie Baby-Sits" came with a bathroom scale set at 50 kg (110 pounds). To scale Barbie is 1.75 m (5'9"), so this is underweight. It also included a book titled How to Lose W
TIL that during WWII, the U.S. government outlawed pre-sliced bread. The ban was supposed to save packaging materials and keep bread prices down. Instead, it enraged consumers, caused a bread knife sh
TIL in Norway everyone's income, net wealth and tax paid are published online and anyone can search them. But you have to log in, the person you look up can see your name in their search history withi
TIL all five Sullivan brothers from Waterloo, Iowa, were tragically killed in action on November 13, 1942 while serving aboard USS Juneau (CL-52), marking the biggest blow to any one family in U.S. wa
TIL Elizabeth Holmes led investors to believe Theranos's blood-testing technology had been deployed by the U.S. military on the battlefield. It had never actually been deployed there.
TIL when Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen went to the Kamestastin crater in eastern Canada for lunar geology training, he met with the Innu Nation indigenous to the area who gifted him their flag. He
TIL that in 1724 Peter the Great had Willem Mons — his wife Catherine's chamberlain and rumored lover — beheaded for corruption, then had his head preserved in alcohol for his Kunstkamera cabinet of c
TIL Jeff Bezos deliberately chose a house with a garage when starting Amazon because he wanted the “garage-startup legitimacy” of companies like Apple and HP.
TIL that Harry S. Truman is that the “S” was not short for a name. His parents chose it to honor both grandfathers—Anderson Shipp Truman and Solomon Young—so his full middle name was simply S.
TIL about former Tennessee Governor Ray Blanton, who cold case investigators recently tied to the 1979 hit on a witness helping the FBI investigate his "pardon selling" scandal—a scandal so severe his
TIL that between 27 BC and 476 AD — over 500 hundred years of history— Roman Emperors died at far higher rates than their Chinese counterparts in the Han Dynasty. Of the ninety-seven emperors who rule
TIL the Yugoslav President Josef Broz Tito followed the custom of Serbian kings and visited parents whenever they had a ninth child, congratulated them and gave them money. He also served as godfather
TIL that Archie Karas was a gambler who received a $10,000 loan in 1992, then turned it into $40 million in 1995 by gambling, only to lose it all later that year.
TIL black holes have a theoretical maximum size of 50 billion solar masses, because if it gets too big, the stuff in the accretion disc starts coalescing into stars rather than falling past the event
TIL The Sultana, a steamboat which exploded and sank on the Mississippi River in 1865, was the worst maritime disaster in US history. The Mississippi River has changed course several times since the d
TIL that the Catholic Church officially censored the heliocentric theory (Earth orbiting the Sun) for over 200 years, but never placed Darwin's Theory of Evolution (The Origin of Species) on its list
TIL an estimated 1 in 60 adults in Fiji is now living with HIV, up from about 1 in 167 five years ago, and the government has now declared it a national emergency.
TIL that Today’s Health Magazine publisher J.I. Rodale was on the Dick Cavett show. He told Cavett that he never felt better and that he decided to live to be one hundred. When Cavett was talking to h
TIL in 1849, Henry Wirz, a convicted Swiss fraudster, fled to the US, where he became a quack doctor and slave plantation overseer. He joined the Confederate Army in the Civil War, and ran the cruel A
TIL that scientists reintroduced the Whooping Crane to an extinct migration route by guiding them through the air with an ultralight airplane they imprinted on. The pilot had to wear a crane costume t
TIL the oldest known share certificate in the world, dated 1288, gave the Bishop of Västerås a 1/8th stake in a Swedish copper mine — whose successor company, Stora Enso, is still listed on the stock
TIL that Larry Boucher, the father of SCSI, wanted the name to be pronounced as "sexy." The technology firm's Dal Allan mispronounced it as "scuzzy," though, and it stuck.
TIL that Greg Maddux and Tony Gwynn faced each other 103 times in their careers, and Gwynn never struck out against Maddux. He hit .429 against Maddux in his career.
TIL Cabin in the Woods (2011) was meant to have a tie-in with the Valve video game Left 4 Dead 2 (2009), serving as an additional DLC level for the game. The collaboration fell through due to MGM's fi
TIL California school districts and local governments have lost about $1 trillion in revenue since Prop 13 passed in 1978, preventing property taxes from rising with real estate values—over $25,000 pe
TIL that the difference between a ~3% mortgage rate and a ~7% rate means that, for every $5 borrowed, you pay roughly another $5 in interest over 30 years.In other words, a 4 percentage point higher r
TIL the property tax in 18th and 19th century USA didn't just tax land and buildings, but included every property owned by someone such as watches, livestock, horses and cash on hand, essentially func
TIL One of the first ever halftime shows in NFL history was when player, Long Time Sleep, wrestled a bear at half time of an Oorang Indians game to promote show dogs in 1922.
TIL that Charles Lightoller, a Titanic survivor, took his 58-foot yacht to Dunkirk in 1940 and rescued 130 men during the desperate evacuation back to England.
TIL that in 1992, gasoline leaked from a Pemex pipeline into Guadalajara’s sewer system for at least two days before exploding, killing more than 200 people, ripping up five miles of city streets and
TIL that the odds of a Canadian NHL franchise not winning the Stanley Cup from 1993 to 2026 are roughly 1 in 2500, or 0.04%. Actuarial organizations use this as an example that "highly unlikely" is no
TIL that during the selection process for the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, the U.S. Air Force required candidates to be married. The Air Force believed that having a family provided a psychological safeg
