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 about the Altamura bread war, a commercial dispute between McDonald's and a local bakery in Altamura, Italy. Despite having more resources, McDonald's was obligated to cease operations in the city
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
TIL America's deadliest sporting event was a Cal-Stanford football game. Dozens fell onto or into a furnace of molten glass. 23 people died and more than 100 were injured.
TIL that Leonhard Euler was so insanely prolific that after his death in 1783, the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences had such a massive backlog of his unpublished papers that it took them nearly 50
TIL in 1957, the Blue Hawaii cocktail was created when a representative of the Dutch distiller Bols asked a bartender, Harry Yee to develop a drink using its blue curaçao liqueur.
TIL Pope Pius II(1405–1464) was a prolific writer, known for being the only sitting Pope to author a memoir before Pope Francis in 2025. Besides that, he wrote several comedies as well as erotic poetr
TIL that our cells contain mitochondria which evolved from bacteria billions of years ago. Mitochondria still make bacterial-like proteins which sometimes fool our immune cells to overreact and cause
TIL that Timothy McVeigh, the OKC bomber, ate two Taco Bell tacos after finding out he had been sentenced to death on his way to prison. He scratched off a promo ticket on the side and found out he wo
TIL that in 1833 a Boston ship owned by "Ice King" Frederic Tudor carried pond ice ~16,000 miles to Calcutta; ~80 tons melted but 100 arrived and sold for a fortune.
TIL on July 31, 1976, the night before Colorado’s 100th anniversary, thousands of people celebrating in Big Thompson Canyon had no warning before a 30-foot wall of water swept through the narrow gorge
TIL The Bayeux Tapestry is believed to have a section missing. A reconstruction of what the missing piece likely showed, the coronation of William as King, was made in 2013.
TIL that inside New Zealand’s Waitomo Cave, thousands of endemic glowworms cover the walls with pinpricks of light, giving the effect of an underground starry night.
TIL the 1783 Laki eruption in Iceland killed over half the country's livestock and at least one-fifth of its people, then lowered global temperatures enough to cause crop failures across Europe.
TIL that the Mercury Seven astronauts calculated that one of the seven would die during Project Mercury. Gus Grissom did die as an astronaut, albeit on the ground during Project Apollo.
TIL of “devotio,” an ancient Roman ritual in which a general vowed to sacrifice his own life in battle—along with the enemy army—to the gods of the underworld in exchange for victory. Livy preserves t
TIL the footballer Jan Vennegoor of Hesselink got his name because of a marriage between the Vennegoor and Hesselink farming families and they kept both surnames because of their prestige. Of means or
TIL that the iconic, cinematic "Roundball Rock" theme song for The NBA on NBC was composed by John Tesh after he woke up in the middle of the night in a French hotel room in 1989 and had to hum the en
TIL an English farmer Winston Howes in 1995, lost his wife of 33 years and planted 6,000 oak trees on his farm forming a secret heart pointing toward her childhood home. It was largely unknown since t
TIL that in 2006, a study found that the San Andreas fault had reached the sufficient stress level for another "Big One", an earthquake with a magnitude greater then 7.0 on the Richter scale, and with
TIL President John F. Kennedy had two caskets because the first one, an expensive bronze model rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, was heavily stained and damaged by bodily fluids on fligh
TIL the developer of the Japanese Shine Muscat grape never registered it for overseas protection, which made it ineligible for overseas royalties. As a result, about 10 billion yen is lost annually du
TIL during the Korean War, American and Greek soldiers held Outpost Harry, a strategic position about 60 miles northeast of Seoul, against Chinese assaults. At times outnumbered 30:1, they endured mas
TIL that after WWII, mutton consumption declined and almost disappeared in the US. American GI's were fed canned mutton during the war and looked down on the meat ever since.
TIL in the hit 1992 horror movie Candyman, actor Tony Todd had real, live bees inside his mouth for the famous scene where bees crawl out of Candyman's mouth. He negotiated a contract clause that paid
TIL In 1862, an enslaved man named Robert Smalls stole a heavily armed Confederate military ship He disguised himself as the captain, sailed past multiple Confederate forts using secret hand signals a
TIL a geologist was ridiculed for decades for claiming the Pacific Northwest was carved by a catastrophic Ice Age flood. NASA satellite images proved him right in the 1970s. He finally received geolog
TIL that working night shifts is linked to faster biological aging, and night shift workers lose almost a year of life expectancy by their mid 40s compared to day workers.
Today I learned that Fillmore, the hippie van from Pixar’s Cars, was originally named “Waldmire” after artist Bob Waldmire whose work often focused on Route 66. Waldmire, a vegetarian, refused to let
TIL the genesis of the Chappelle Show sketch with Wayne Brady came from his anger at Dave Chappelle for a Paul Mooney joke about him. Brady feels the famous sketch showed his larger range and opened u
TIL Watson Brake in Louisiana was built before Stonehenge, and 1000 years before the Egyptian pyramids, but is inaccessible to the public because one family member refuses to sell the land to the Stat
TIL ~1 in 1,000 females have Trisomy X (extra X chromosome). It's rarely diagnosed; fewer than 10% know they have it. They can have learning disabilities, wide-spaced eyes, incurved little fingers, ea
TIL Dipak Pokhrel, a co-pilot for Yeti Airlines, died in a aviation accident in 2006. 17 years later, his soon-to-be-pilot widowed wife Anju Khatiwada, met the same fate, on the same airline, in 2023.
TIL during the Battle of Crécy in 1346, the completely blind King John of Bohemia insisted on fighting and ordered his knights to tie their horses to his so he could swing his sword, resulting in his
