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 Audrey Hepburn secretly delivered messages for the Dutch Resistance as a teenager during WWII and reportedly helped raise money for the resistance through underground performances.
TIL that according to scientists, forgotten memories aren't generally lost forever from your brain. Instead, they are simply made inaccessible to you, and so can be returned with the right stimuli.
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 in France, they passed the "Right to Disconnect law" back in 2017. Making it illegal for companies with over 50 employees to penalize their workers for ignoring work emails/ messages after wo
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
TIL there’s a Philadelphia Eagles bar in Tokyo, near Tokyo Station. Cheesesteaks are on the menu and they show Eagles games live no matter when they’re on.
TIL: during much of the 18th century most surrendered armies would just be paroled back to their home countries with a promise to not fight again rather than kept in PoW camps
TIL a Mongol advisor talked the Khan out of killing all of northern China's peasants by calculating they'd pay 500,000 coins of silver a year in taxes if left alive.
TIL that for Con Air, filmmakers used a real, gutted C-123K and sent it crashing into the actual Sands Hotel in Las Vegas, with 14 cameras filming the stunt.
TIL that Lose/Lose is a 2009 video game made as an art project that erases a random file from your computer for each enemy you beat and can therefore brick it by design if you're not lucky. A reviewer
TIL:That Tupac Shakur was a member of the Baltimore Young Communist League and dated the daughter of the director of the local chapter of the Communist Party USA.
TIL that the sculpture "L'Homme au doigt" was auctioned for $141.3 million, making it twice as expensive as the most expensive auctioned jewel (the Pink Star diamond), and almost the exact same price
TIL Jimi Hendrix was inspired to write the song "The Wind Cries Mary" as an apology after having a heated argument with his girlfriend Kathy Mary Etchingham over a plate of lumpy mashed potatoes.
TIL a Babylonian clay tablet called Plimpton 322, made around 1800 BC, lists number patterns matching Pythagorean triples, over 1,000 years before Pythagoras was born
TIL King Mithridates VI took small doses of poison daily to make himself immune to assassination. When he later tried to poison himself to avoid capture, it didn't work, and he had to ask a guard to k
TIL that as a baby, Harambe was taken home by a zoo employee at night, bottle-fed and even had his diapers changed after his mother stopped caring for him at about 21 days old.
TIL that in 1977 GM secretly put Chevy engines in Oldsmobiles, and a jury awarded 14,000 owners $550 each in one of the biggest consumer fraud cases in US history.
TIL the world's first bike path made entirely of recycled plastic waste was opened in the Netherlands, taking equivalent amounts of over 218,000 plastic cups out of landfills.
TIL cities are actively using vertical vine coverage and green canopies on buildings as a low-tech solution to drop surface temperatures by up to several degrees.
TIL that the infamous comic where Hank Pym hits his wife Janet was meant to be an accident. According to writer Jim Shooter, Pym was meant to accidentally strike her while making a dismissive gesture.
TIL a Border Patrol checkpoint caused a six-hour traffic jam, prompting Key West to secede from the United States, declare war, surrender one minute later, and ask for $1 billion in foreign aid.
TIL about "koden," or cash given at a funeral in Japan. Unlike "shugi" for weddings, "koden" banknotes must NOT be pristine so it won't look like the giver was expecting the decendent's passing. Atten
TIL that the spiciest peppers in the world all belong to the exact same species called Capsicum chinense, named because it was mistakenly thought to come from China. It includes the habanero, Scotch b
TIL the Brewer & Shipley hit song, "One Toke Over the Line", despite being banned on many radio stations for its drug references, was performed on "The Lawrence Welk Show" in 1971 as a "gospel number"
TIL bears preparing to hibernate actively seek out foods helping them purge gastrointestinal parasites - allowing animals minimize harm parasites may otherwise cause in empty bowels of sleeping bears
TIL the famous airplane the Spruce Goose is actually made of birch. A longstanding rumour is that mechanics working on the plane called it the "Birch Bitch."
TIL the head of Germany’s armed forces in WWII was Wilhelm Keitel: nicknamed “Lakitel” or Lackey because of his willingness to be nothing but Hitlers mouthpiece. He was known as a blindingly loyal toa
TIL In 1956, an airforce mechanic with 2 hours flying experience was cleared to perform a high speed taxi run in an F-86. He accidentally took off but was talked down for a landing with minor damage.
TIL that the iconic parade scene in Ferris Bueller's Day Off was filmed partly during a real Chicago parade, with as many as 12 cameras and only one chance to get the live footage right!
