TIL the US Federal Government banned the sale of sliced bread as a Wartime Rationing Measure in Jan. 1943. It was argued to conserve wax paper and steel needed for replacement bread slicing blades. Th
TIL The decision to allow imports of Argentinian Beef to the United States came in 2015 after nearly 90 consecutive years of it being banned due to foot & mouth disease
TIL that Dutch employers must keep paying sick employees for up to 2 years, at least 70% of their salary, often topped up to 100% for the first year by collective agreements.
TIL the narration in Arrested Development was a way to let the writers fit in all the jokes they wanted. By leaving the exposition to the narrator, the characters could jump directly to the funny part
TIL some variable giant stars like Betelgeuse don't have perfectly spherical surfaces. Their internal convection mechanisms cause plasma to rapidly rise to and fall from their surfaces, which causes t
TIL about 'boustrophedon', a writing system where you alternate writing left-to-right and right-to-left each line. Only one modern script, Avoiuli, still uses it.
TIL the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest asks participants to create the worst possible opening line for a novel. The winner for 2024 was "She had a body that reached out and slapped my face like a five-
TIL female warriors were fairly common in Japanese history. Many were trained in warfare, participated in battles, led troops and there were units consisting of only women. This declined around the 17
TIL the Olympic Games used to be strictly amateur-only. Abusing this, the Soviet Union would enter athletes who were nominally working in some profession, but in reality were all paid to train on a fu
TIL Napoleon Bonaparte was considered a notorious germaphobe for the time, taking long baths and extensively grooming himself daily, as well as attemping to mask bad smells around him with cologne on
TIL there's an orchid species known only from a single watercolour painted in 1823. Botanists named it in 1996 from the painting alone, nobody has found the plant since, and it's still listed as prote
TIL that barber-surgeons - who also cut hair and shaved people - performed major surgeries like amputations, and in the 18th century the survival rate for these operations was only around 25-40%
TIL Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach built the Reitwagen in 1885, widely considered the first motorcycle powered by an internal-combustion gasoline engine, long before motorcycles became common on
TIL the Mediterranean Sea dried up 5 million years ago leaving behind a huge desert. Then an flood rushed through Gibraltar rapidly filling the sea again.
TIL calcium oxide, or quicklime, when heated produces an intense glow and was used in theaters before the advent of electricity, hence the word “limelight”.
TIL that the "Woolsack"—the seat of the Lord Speaker in the UK House of Lords created by King Edward III to symbolise the immense importance of the wool trade to medieval England—was discovered in 193
TIL Practcially unknown outside of Asia, Baijiu is the best-selling spirit on the planet - outconsuming whiskey, vodka, rum, and gin COMBINED , and due to a massive domestic popularity in a country th
TIL that Jordan Nagai, who played Russell in Up, wasn't originally intending to audition for the role. He only came to support his older brother, who was auditioning.
TIL That Coca-Cola still uses real coca leaves in its recipe. A single chemical plant in New Jersey is legally allowed by the DEA to import the leaves, extract the cocaine alkaloid, and send the decoc
TIL Subway (fast food chain) was called Pete's Super Submarine Sandwiches before 1968. It got the modern name due to the original name sounded too confusing.
TIL 9 years after the death of Dr. John Langdon Down, best known for his pioneering classifications of 'Mongoloid idiocy' (Down Syndrome) during his career at Royal Earlswood Asylum for Idiots, had a
TIL Charles Mason, who graduated first in the class of 1829 at West Point ahead of future Confederate Army commander Robert E. Lee, served as the First Supreme Court Justice for Iowa, also spent time
TIL that Titan's atmosphere is dense enough that a human wouldn't need a pressurized spacesuit to stand on its surface. The surface pressure is about 1.5x that of Earth, roughly equivalent to being 15
TIL a scientist submitted a research publication to a predatory journal consisting exclusively of the phrase "Get me off your fucking mailing list". It was rated as "excellent" and accepted for public
TIL that the Sesame Street Count counts because ancient vampire folklore says that vampires suffer from arithmomania and have to obsessively count things. Legend says that if you threw rice at a vampi
TIL that due to the title screen mistakenly neglecting to include a copyright notice, the film Night of the Living Dead has been in the public domain for decades. Hundreds of versions have been releas
TIL the "Resolute desk" in the Oval Office in the White House is called that because it's made of timber from HMS Resolute - a British Royal Navy Arctic exploration ship.
TIL humans evolved staggered sleep schedules so someone was always awake to guard the camp. Known as the "Sentinel Hypothesis," this explains why teens are natural night owls while seniors wake up ear
TIL that Shazam (Billy Batson), published by Fawcett comics was the #1 selling comic-book, and was lapping Superman in sells, until DC put a stop to it - taking them to court and claiming he was a Sup
TIL about Nicholas Barbon, Barbon observed the power of fashion and luxury goods to enhance trade. Fashion demanded the replacement of goods before they had worn out; he believed this directed people
TIL astronomers detected a four-carbon sugar called erythrulose in a molecular cloud 26,000 light-years from Earth, suggesting that complex organic molecules can form in space before planets exist.
TIL Antabuse (Disulfiram) is a medication used to stop alcoholics from drinking by causing intolerable side effects. It functions by blocking the same enzyme responsible for "Asian Flush Syndrome" – t
