TIL that after two games of the 1987 NFL season, the NFL Players association went on strike. One week of games was canceled, followed by three weeks of games played largely by replacement players. Att
TIL Christopher Lee was the only member of the Lord of the Rings cast who had actually met J.R.R. Tolkien. They crossed paths by chance in the Eagle and Child pub in Oxford. Lee, a lifelong fan who re
TIL The first book on forensic science was written in the 13th century. It included a story of how a murder was solved by telling all suspects to bring their sickles to the town square, and watching a
TIL that Thomas Paine's bones were dug up in 1819 and taken to England by radical journalist William Cobbett, who intended to give Paine a heroic reburial in his native country. It never happened. Cob
TIL that Aleister Crowley, who helped pioneer attempts on K2 and Kanchenjunga, was also an English occultist who called himself “The Beast 666,” founded his own religion, studied yoga in India, allege
TIL that the original Godzilla suit was so hot and heavy that technicians would regularly pour out cups of sweat between takes, and suit actor Haruo Nakajima lost 20 pounds of weight over the course o
TIL Leonard Matlovich, the first gay service member to purposefully out himself, was buried in the same row as J Edgar Hoover and his longtime Assistant Director. Matlovich chose it as a kind of "last
TIL that in Sweden, a man heard roaring coming from his neighbor's garden and discovered a moose stuck in an apple tree, apparently drunk after gorging on fermented apples. Firefighters had to saw off
TIL that a Polish-Jewish immigrant opened a lesbian café in Greenwich Village in 1925, was imprisoned for publishing a book called “Lesbian Love,” deported from the U.S., and later sent to Auschwitz.
TIL that “The Fat Controller” in Thomas the Tank Engine is called “Sir Topham Hatt” in the American version, because “fat” was considered derogatory in the US but not in the UK.
TIL King Philip II of Spain (1527–1598) ruled Spain, Portugal, Naples and Sicily, controlled the Netherlands and was King of England and Ireland through his marriage to Mary I. His empire also include
TIL 40,000 people showed up to a place in the middle of nowhere in Texas in 1896 to watch two trains intentionally run into each other. “The Crash at Crush,” brought in more people than inhabited Texa
TIL the Budweiser name has been disputed for a century between a Czech and an American company and only one of them can be sold under the name depending on where you are
TIL Animal rennet, one of the main ingredients used in making cheese, is gathered from the gut of baby cows, sheep, or goats and is what separates the milk they drink into liquids and solids for diges
TIL that in 1896, a Swedish explorer named Salomon August Andrée attempted to reach the North Pole by hydrogen balloon. The expedition disappeared into the Arctic and was only discovered 33 years late
TIL Voltaire wrote a sci-fi novella where a giant alien from a planet orbiting Sirius befriends a giant alien from Saturn after being banished from his home planet. They visit Earth and assume it's li
TIL that in 1878, a 96-pound machinist flew a hand-cranked hydrogen airship, then repaired its propeller with a pocketknife while dangling 3,000 feet in the air.
TIL that Japan's first astronaut, Toyohiro Akiyama, hated his time in space because he suffered from severe space sickness and chain-smoked four packs a day on Earth. His fellow cosmonauts later repor
TIL that shares of the company IG Farben, officially put into liquidation in 1952 and in insolvency in 2003, were exchanged on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange until 2012
TIL The lottery winner of the Taylor Swift Eras VIP tickets concert in Vancouver was a music fan who donated four seats in his VIP suite to the Make-A-Wish-Foundation. He bought a scratch and win tick
TIL that 39 days before D-Day, a top-secret full-scale rehearsal for the Utah Beach landings was conducted in England called Exercise Tiger. It was attacked by German E-boats, killing 749 American ser
TIL that Kuwait’s unofficial stock market grew so large it trailed only the US and Japan — and when it crashed in 1982, nearly every bank in the country became insolvent, plunging Kuwait into recessio
TIL French impostor Frédéric Bourdin convinced a Texas family he was their missing 13 year old son. Bourdin bleached his hair, got a matching tattoo and concocted a story he was human trafficked. Desp
TIL that the Hula grass skirt is a fairly recent addition. It arrived from the Gilbert islands sometime in the late 1800s and isn't originally Hawaiian.
TIL in 2013 a Columbian man with HIV was admitted to the hospital with an aggressive malignant cancer that was not human and from a small tape worm. He died 72 hours later.
TIL that in Spider-Man: The Animated Series, Spider-Man was not allowed to punch anyone. Producer John Semper Jr. claimed that it was his idea, as he didn't want to teach children to "solve problems t
TIL that in 2004, Reason Magazine sent out their June magazine issue with personalized covers to each one of their 40,000 subscribers. The personalized cover was a satellite image photo of their house
TIL from 1994 to 2002, there was a strange art installation in Portland, Oregon called the "24 Hour Church of Elvis" containing assorted 70s pop culture memorabilia. The "church" would perform real, l
TIL among all active US physicians, only 0.75% of them, or 1 for every 133, are plastic surgeons. There are only 7,719 plastic surgeons among 1,032,365 active US physicians.
TIL there are over a half billion tea drinkers in China who consume an average of 3.5 pounds of tea per year, and the value of "all the tea in China" passed one trillion yuan in 2023
TIL Grad student David Radies was doing random sampling for a lichen diversity study in British Columbia when he saw logging tape tied around a red cedar at least two thousand years old. He discovered
TIL that in 2023, a Montana ski patrol reported that a mountain goat started a 1,000' avalanche, road the avalanche all the way down, and walked away without apparent injury.
TIL that after the disastrous Battle of Midway, Japanese Naval high command not only kept the true result hidden from the public, but also from the Army and most of the Navy. Only Emperor Hirohito and
TIL that last year the last remaining Shaker community gained its 3rd member. The Shakers was a Christian sect founded in the late 18th century with a peak membership of upward to 4,000. One of their
TIL 2001: A Space Odyssey used a $750,000 rotating spacecraft set that was 38 feet across and spun at up to 3 mph. The camera rotated 360° with the set, making actors appear to walk up the walls and a
TIL when NBA star Reggie Lewis died in 1993, his contract remained on the Boston Celtics' salary cap for 2 years because the league had no provision to void the contracts of deceased players, and othe
TIL that Egyptian cotton exports surged from $7M to $77M between 1861–1865, giving Britain and France an alternative to Confederate cotton, undermining the South's "King Cotton" strategy and helping s
TIL that while Michael Jackson’s Bad officially holds the U.S. record for 5 number-one singles, it actually produced 7 different number-one hits globally when including international charts. The only
TIL in 1497 Leonardo da Vinci invented the miter lock gate for canals. Instead of sliding vertical doors, he designed two angled swinging leaves that use upstream water pressure to self-seal the joint
