TIL refrigerating batteries used to be common practice to slow the discharge process and extend their lifespan. Today, modern batteries should not be refrigerated due to the risk of damage from conden
TIL Machiavelli never saw The Prince published — it appeared in print in 1532, five years after his death — and by 1559 the Church had put it on the Index of Forbidden Books.
TIL consumed by a forbidden passion for his stepmother, Stratonice, Antiochus of the Seleucid Empire fell gravely ill. To save his life, his father, King Seleucus, divorced Stratonice and gave her to
TIL the Romans destroyed entire mountains with pressurized water to mine gold: at Las Médulas in Spain — the largest gold mine in the Roman Empire — seven aqueducts fed a technique called ruina montiu
TIL that the population of Detroit, Michigan has grown for 3 straight years since 2023, reversing a trend of 65 consecutive years of population loss from 1957 to 2022. It currently sits at America’s 2
TIL that from 2013 to 2015 a maths forum user called "Cleo" posted correct answers to integrals that had stumped everyone, often within hours, never showed any working, and said a medical condition st
TIL that the Piltdown Man hoax shaped scientific thinking for over 40 years: fossils presented in 1912 as the "missing link" between humans and apes were widely accepted before being revealed in 1953
TIL that the record for largest outdoor film set belongs to The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), which built a 400 x 230 metres (1312 x 754 feet) replica of the Roman Forum, built in Las Matas near Ma
TIL that in 2011, a gold-plated necklace recovered from the Titanic, belonging to First Class passenger Eleanor Widener, was stolen from a museum in Copenhagen. It remains missing.
TIL coffee (the drink) wasn’t invented until the 1400s in Yemen, who maintained a virtual monopoly on it until Dutch smuggled the plant to Java in the 1600s
TIL dark tree trunks absorb more solar heat than white, reflective snow, causing snow to melt in rings around trees called "thaw circles." These early bare patches give understory plants a head start
TIL The Deathstalker Scorpion is one of the deadliest in the world, but the FDA hasn't approved it's anti-venom thus the US Military has a constant "Investigational Drug Application " on file to ensur
TIL the Golden Poison Frog (Phyllobates terribilis) is considered the most poisonous extant animal species on the planet. 1mg of the batrachotoxin poison they secrete is enough to kill between 10 & 20
TIL, Dr.Phil played linebacker for the university of Tulsa and was apart of one of the biggest blowouts in college football history, when they fell to Houston 100-6
TIL that Henry D. Cogswell built free drinking fountains in major U.S. cities because he believed that people would drink less if they had access to free drinking water. They proved unpopular, and one
TIL Vincent van Gogh declared his love and proposed marriage to his cousin Cornelia "Kee" Vos-Stricker, to which she replied "No, nay, never." Months later, Gogh traveled to Amsterdam to meet her, but
TIL when Spitfire and Hurricane engines kept cutting out in dives during WW2, the fix was a simple washer in the fuel line designed by Beatrice Shilling, an engineer who also raced motorbikes at Brook
TIL that in 2019 an Irish man was hospitalized after injecting his own semen in his arm for 18 months. He believed it would ease his chronic back pain.
TIL that Will Sawin enrolled at Yale at the age of 10, and graduated from both Yale and high school at the age of 18. He received a PhD from Princeton at the age of 23 and is the Fernholz Professor of
TIL that one of the co-creators of Keurig coffee machines sold his stake for $50,000 in 1997. In 2010 more than $2 billion of Keurig machines and K-Cups were sold.
TIL at the 1925 US Open, Bobby Jones called a penalty on himself when his ball moved slightly, though no official or spectator had seen it. It cost him the title, and when people praised his honesty h
TIL that Leonardo da Vinci’s research led to the discovery that erections were caused by blood flow to the penis. Before that, the common conception was that they were caused by sudden rushes of air a
TIL that in a 1964 experiment, most rhesus monkeys chose to go hungry rather than pull a chain that gave them food but also shocked another monkey, and one refused to pull it for 12 days
TIL about the Sally-Anne test, a psychology experiment used to measure “theory of mind” (that other people can hold beliefs/knowledge different from their own). Kids under four typically fail because
TIL Dublin's Cineworld had to pay a fired worker €20,000 ($25,000) in compensation over a €1 snack dispute. The employee, Carl Meade, was sacked for gross misconduct after accidentally paying for a re
TIL about Auguste Maquet, the chief collaborator of French novelist Alexandre Dumas, co-writing such works as The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers. Many devotees of Dumas claim that "Maq
TIL: The origins of the word Bayou is NOT considered to originate from French, but rather the term "Bayuk" which is Choctaw for "small stream". Bayou is associated with French due to Louisiana Creole,
TIL that transgender people are twice as likely to serve in the U.S military than cisgender people. Roughly 20% of transgender population have served in the armed forces compared to roughly 10% of cis
TIL that during production of Iron Man (2008), the character was so obscure that 30 writers passed on the project. Even when a script was written, requests for rewrites were met with more refusals.
TIL when the Czar Nicholas II, Empress Alexandra and their children were imprisoned, four members of their household remained with them: their doctor, cook, footman and maid. They stayed with the Roma
TIL Cleopatra caught Mark Antony secretly having divers attach fish to his hook to impress her. She pretended not to notice, invited a crowd back the next day, then had her own diver attach a salted f
TIL the Hulk’s most famous origin story (accidentally exposing himself to radiation in a lab self-experiment) comes from the 1970s TV show and not the comics—where he originally became the Hulk by bei
TIL Harlen Ellison was fired on his first day on set before lunch while working on Disneys "The Black Hole" (a star wars like movie). He had suggested the movie be a porno of iconic Disney characters.
TIL about Willie Francis an American teenager known for surviving a failed execution by electrocution. Sentenced to death at age 16, he was 17 when he survived the first attempt to execute him, as the
TIL Sun Yaoting, the last Chinese eunuch, was castrated at age 8 without anaesthesia. While he was recovering, China became a republic. He died in 1996, and was supposed to be buried with his preserve
TIL that there is a Dark Star Road in the city of Benson, Arizona. "Benson, Arizona" is the theme song to the 1974 film Dark Star by John Carpenter (Halloween, The Thing). The road is named in honour
TIL that up to half of the water on Earth is actually older than the Sun itself. It formed in interstellar space and survived the creation of our solar system.
TIL Charles Darwin once caught two rare beetles, one in each hand. When he spotted an even rarer third beetle, he refused to let any of them go, so he put one of the first two in his mouth. It sprayed
