TIL a famous book collector stole pages from rare books in the British Museum to complete his own copies, and librarians later proved it by matching wormholes, folds, and impressions on the stolen pag
TIL Steven Van Zandt co-wrote Sun City, a song protesting apartheid in South Africa. More than 40 artists participated in its recording, including Bono, Run-DMC, Bonnie Raitt, Bob Dylan and Miles Davi
TIL that although Olympic gold medalist Floyd Patterson and his trainer Cus D’Amato wanted to pursue the boxing world heavyweight championship as early as 1954, they waited two years until the undefea
TIL in 2020 rumours circulated in France of horses and donkeys being killed and mutilated, with around 30 animals were reported mutilated. Journalistic investigations showed that it was "a collective
TIL The Batmobile Tumbler from the Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy is a real, working vehicle custom built for the movies. The main difference between the real version and the movie version is the co
TIL that about half of human DNA consists of "jumping genes". parasitical code that multiplied inside our genome and do not contribute to human function or survival.
TIL "The Dark Knight Rises" was heavily inspired by Rocky III, with co-writer/director Christopher Nolan and writer David S. Goyer modeling the narrative arc around an aging, broken-down champion faci
TIL that the Daleks in Doctor Who are regarded as having been pivotal in saving the show from being cancelled. Their popularity at one point in 1964, surpassed The Beatles in the TV ratings
TIL that in 1924, The New York Times called crossword puzzles a "sinful waste of time" and refused to print them. They only relented during WWII to give stressed readers a distraction from grim war ne
TIL that in 1921, Babe Ruth hit his 139th career home run, passing Roger Connor to become baseball’s all-time home run leader. Ruth kept adding to the record until retiring with 714 in 1935, and remai
TIL that in Bali, teenagers have their canine teeth filed. In traditional Balinese belief, the practice removes the animal instincts of the person and proves that the person is mature enough to marry.
TIL that in 1974, Stan Lee made an "offhand remark" wondering why Iron Man didn't have a nose. This cause the illustrators to scramble to add a nose to his helmet. A year and a half later, Stan Lee sa
TIL Ian Mckellen first day of filming in LOTR was Gandalf's arrival in The Shire. The second day was the last scene of the third film where he is saying goodbye to the Hobbits, to which he asked Peter
TIL In the middle third of the 19th century, the clippers which carried cargoes of tea from China to Britain would compete in informal races to be first ship to dock in London with the new crop of eac
TIL about Savitri Devi, A French born Greek Nazi Spy, who embraced Hinduism and became a radical animal rights activist while being a spy in India and believed that Adolf Hitler was an avatar of Hindu
TIL that the world's oldest hotel, Japan's Nishiyama Onsen Keiunkan, is no longer family‑owned after more than 1,300 years of continuous operation by the same lineage. In 2017 the 52‑generation family
TIL Agatha Christie's play, The Mousetrap, has been running almost continuously in the West End since 1952. This has prevented any film adaptation from being made, and has even kept the short story it
TIL Michael Jordan donated his entire first-year salary after coming out of retirement to play for the Washington Wizards to support 9/11 relief efforts
TIL about Okawa Elementary School, a school in Ishinomaki City, Japan which was destroyed during the 2011 tsunami, leading to the deaths of 74 of its 108 students and 10 of the 11 teachers. The school
TIL an ASML machine used to make advanced chips costs about $150M, is bus-sized, has 100,000 parts and 2 km of cable, and needs 40 shipping containers, 20 trucks and 3 Boeing 747s to deliver. It creat
TIL the former director of Tekken, Katsuhiro Harada, missed out on a barbecue with fans to celebrate the addition of Leroy Smith. Due to misunderstanding the intention of fans, Harada thought the cook
TIL the Vietnam Veterans Memorial includes more than just those killed in action. The Wall also lists service members who died in Vietnam from accidents, illness, drowning, murder, animal attacks, sna
TIL, that among the reasons Thomas Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark to explore the Louisiana Purchase, is he thought Mastodons still existed and they were likely to encounter them.
TIL In order to support the 3D graphics required by the SNES 1993 Star Fox videogame, a custom RISC coprocessor was soldered into every game cartridge. The SNES' native CPU was too slow to render poly
TIL that there is a real fruit called the Black Republican Cherry. The name originated as a slur against abolitionist supporters and Republicans like Abraham Lincoln. The Black Republican cherry is a
TIL the 1985 discovery of the Titanic happened during a secret US Navy mission to find a sunken nuclear sub from the 60s. Commanding officer Robert Ballard had 12 days left over to hunt for the Titani
TIL that in 1938, a manufacturer printed fake Social Security cards for their wallets sold at Woolworth's. Some buyers used the number as their own as late as 1977.
TIL that the personal physician to King George V purposefully hastened the King's death in part so the announcement would appear in the morning papers as opposed to the "less appropriate" evening pape
TIL a drinks vendor in Germany cheated $47,000 from a bottle recycling machine by putting a single bottle into it 177,451 times. He built a wooden tunnel and magnetic sensor to pull the bottle back ou
TIL that when New Hampshire abolished capital punishment, the law was not applied retroactively. This affected only one man, Michael Addison, who has remained on death row since 2008.
TIL Kris Tompkins, former Patagonia CEO, and Doug Tompkins, founder of The North Face, spent decades buying and restoring wilderness across Chile and Argentina. Kris later donated their land in Argent
TIL that the 70s punk band Germs original name was "Sophistifuck and the Revlon Spam Queens", but they had to shorten the name as they could not afford that many letters on a T-shirt.
TIL that in 1843, Alexander Bain patented a machine that could transmit handwritten images over telegraph lines making the fax machine older than the telephone
TIL that the iconic cat in Marlon Brando's hands in the movie "The Godfather" was just a stray cat that was wandering around the Paramount Studios lot. The director of the movie, Francis Ford Coppola,
TIL a rare golden cloth called "sea silk" was woven from the fine threads that pen shells (a type of clam) spin to anchor themselves to the sea floor, and it was so fine that a pair of knitted gloves
TIL The Penny Black was the world's first adhesive postage stamp used in a public postal system. It was first issued in the United Kingdom on 1 May 1840 but was not valid for use until 6 May. The stam
TIL the company behind Disney World’s Tree of Life took its theme park expertise and turned it into a business disguising cell towers as trees. California is now its biggest market.
TIL that the Mr Bean movie opened opposite Starship Troopers in 1997, and its surprising success at the US Box Office and Starship Troopers' underperformance was attributed by some to underage kids bu
TIL Harry Flashman, the original school bully in fiction (from the 1857 novel Tom Brown's School Days), as an adult became the roguish and dishonourable antihero of George MacDonald Fraser's The Flash
TIL that in the 16th century, Spain began mining enormous quantities of silver from Cerro Rico at Potosí in present-day Bolivia. The flood of silver into Europe helped fuel major inflation, enormous d
