52 Fascinating Facts That People Just Learned and So Can You

Nathan Johnson Published 05/14/2024 in ftw

Expand your horizons with a mixed bag of fun facts people just learned for the first time.

In this day and age, you can say just about whatever you want and someone on the internet will confuse it with the truth. But not here, we would never ever lie to you (or would we?). You can trust us that these facts didn't come out of nowhere and have been vetted to ensure you are only getting it straight.

But did you know that Louis Vitton burns all their dead stock at the end of each year? They do this to limit the supply of their products so there are no (or very few) opportunities to buy discounted items from the brand.

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1.
Shortly after the Korean War, there were few refrigerators or protein-dense foods in South Korea. Koreans would barter with American troops for Spam (canned pork). As South Korea continued to develop, Spam turned into a staple food and it is often a common gift given during Korean Thanksgiving.
2.
US Airways kicked a blind and and his dog off a plane in 2013 after the Dog repositioned itself during a two hour delay. They cancelled the flight after passengers disembarked in protest saying the flight attendant responsible be kicked off instead of the man and his service dog.
3.
TIL That Fermilab used to clean its particle accelerators with a ferret named Felicia, who would run through the tubes with cleaning supplies attached and be rewarded with hamburger meat
4.
A park bench in Bristol was given an official postal address so doctors could register the homeless as patients
5.
Certain oak tree populations will synchronize to produce almost no acorns, only to rain them down excessively the following year, known as a "mast" year. The year preceding the mast year is thought to starve off the mammal populations feeding on the acorns.
6.
TIL that during WW1, the MI5 used Girl Guides to deliver secret messages. They used Girl Guides instead of Boy Scouts because they found out that Boy Scouts weren't efficient enough, boisterous and talkative.
7.
TIL that in 2009 Icelandic engineers accidentally drilled into a magma chamber with temperatures up to 1000C (1832F). Instead of abandoning the well like a previous project in Hawaii, they decided to pump water down and became the most powerful geothermal well ever created.
8.
TIL of the Grand Hotel in Scarborough, England, which had 365 rooms for each day of the year, 52 chimneys for the weeks, 12 floors for months of the year, and was shaped in a V to represent Queen Victoria
9.
TIL that beer bottles are brown as it blocks out the sun's rays and helps preserve the taste. A shortage of brown glass after the Second World War meant higher quality beer makers chose green to distinguish themselves from the companies using clear glass.
10.
TIL that at the age of 17, Steven Spielberg directed a sci-fi film called "Firelight". The budget was $500, and it was shown at a local cinema, with 500 people coming, and tickets costing a dollar each. However, one person paid $2, so the movie made $1, making it Spielberg's first commercial success
11.
TIL that anatomically dogs have two arms and two legs - not four legs; the front legs (arms) have wrist joints and are connected to the skeleton by muscle and the back legs have hip joints and knee caps.
12.
In 1911 The Rigby family included their cat Tom in their census form. 'Tom Cat' was listed as being an 8-year old, married Mouse-Catcher, Soloist and Thief with 16 children. His birthplace was listed as Cheshire and he was described as being 'speechless' in the infirmity section of the form.
13.
TIL that in 2019, Pope Francis received a bottle of Oban malt whiskey while visiting Scottish priests, and declared it to be 'the real holy water'. The BBC captured the footage for a documentary, which was censored by the Vatican.
14.
The Godfather's famous cat-in-lap scene was entirely unscripted. A stray cat randomly wandered onto the set, so Coppola grabbed it and put it in Marlin Brando's lap without a word.
15.
TIL when giraffes are born, they fall six feet on their head, but it's the fall that gets them to start breathing
16.
TIL measles gives your immune system 'amnesia.' Exposure to measles leaves the victim with a strong response to the measles virus, but an increased vulnerability to all other pathogens.
17.
Caffeine is the coffee plant's natural defense mechanism. It leaches into the surrounding soil as leaves from the plant drop and are decomposed into the soil. Since caffeine is toxic to other plants, it prevents other plants from growing around the coffee plant and competing for sunlight.
18.
In 1802, Napoleon added a Polish legion to fight off the slave rebellion in Haiti. However, the Polish army joined the Haitian slaves in the fight for independence. Haiti's first head of state called Polish people "the White Negroes of Europe", which was then regarded as a great honour.
19.
TIL that in the early-20th-century actress, Maude Adams, wanted to do a film version of Peter Pan, but was against doing it in black-and-white. She began working with experts on those obstacles, i.e. lack of color film and inadequate lighting. She earned several electric-light patents in the 1930s.
20.
TIL that Mesopotamians figured out that the Earth orbited the sun about 1,700 years before Copernicus and Newton. They also figured out that the moon causes the tides and that the Earth rotates around its axis.
21.
TIL that Queen Elizabeth II has a body double, Ella Slack, who takes her place during all rehearsals. She is, however, not allowed to sit on the throne at the House of the Lords during the rehearsals. She has never accepted payment for her services, describing it as a "pleasure and an honour."
22.
“The road not taken” by Robert Frost, was actually written to mock an indecisive friend and intended to inspire no one.
23.
TIL that a breed of wool dogs existed on the pacific northwest coast. Indigenous people would keep the dogs isolated on small islands to prevent inter breeding with hunting dogs. The wool dogs were cared for and feed a rich diet of seafood to produce strong yarn to make blankets from.
24.
Dr. John Snow discovered cholera is spread through water and not air. He discovered this during an outbreak in London in 1854 in which hundreds of people became infected and died. The only ones not infected were those who only drank beer, not water
25.
TIL during the Golden Age of Piracy, women sometimes became pirates by disguising themselves as men in an effort to take advantage of freedom and rights that men could only enjoy. Anne and Mary were two famous female pirates of that time who fell in love with each others' disguised manly appearance!
26.
It would take 375,000 Lego bricks stacked one on top of another to destroy the bottom brick. The tower would be nearly 12,000 feet tall.
27.
TIL a man built the world's largest treehouse after claiming God told him to do so. It was 97 feet tall. It took 12 years to build and burned down in 15 minutes in 2019.
28.
TIL that glassblowers in Alexandria, Egypt were the first to produce clear glass around 100 AD through the introduction of manganese dioxide into the glass making process. Thereafter, the Romans began to use clear glass for architectural purposes.
29.
TIL that Einstein's support for pacifist, civil rights and left-wing causes in Europe had drawn suspicion from J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, and after his arrival to America, the Bureau launched what would eventually become a 22-year surveillance campaign since the FBI believed Einstein was a Soviet spy.
30.
That in 1948 the Idaho Department of Fish and Game used surplus parachutes from WWII to drop threatened beavers into a nearby protected area. After some careful calibrations, 76 beavers made the skydive and all but one survived the drop.
31.
TIL that monkeys in Japan learned to wash sweet potatoes in fresh water to clean them. They later switched to washing sweet potatoes in salt water. It is theorized that this is because they like the salty taste more than plain potatoes.
32.
Lafayette’s grave in Paris is filled with dirt from Massachusetts as he wished to be buried in American soil. Additionally, I learned the flag remained in place during WW2 because the Nazis never looked behind the private cemetery’s walls.
33.
During the Second Opium War (1860), French and British troops reached the Imperial Palace in Peking, China. The troops *looted* everything in sight—including five Pekingese dogs. The dogs were taken back to England and one of the dogs was given to Queen Victoria. She named the dog “Looty"
34.
Texas didn’t have safety regulations on natural gas until after a school blew up and killed hundreds of children. Nobody was held accountable, but they passed strict regulations afterwards. It was so bad that even Hitler sent a letter of condolence.
35.
Apple purchased the iPhone.org domain name in 1999, eight years before the official introduction of the iPhone.
36.
TIL in 1977, Ben Cohen was a struggling potter & Jerry Greenfield was getting rejected by medical schools. The pair decided to open a bagel shop, but the cost of bagel machines was too high. As a result, they enrolled in a $5 ice cream making course instead. A year later, they created Ben & Jerry's
37.
TIL the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea is a wildlife haven. While most natural wildlife and rare plants have been killed off in the South, the DMZ hasn’t been touched in over 60 years, which resulted in unique species of flora and fauna to flourish in this area.
38.
Mozart has a pet starling (bird) which could sing part of his piano concerto in G Major. He had bought it from a shop after hearing it sing a phrase from a work he wrote six weeks previously, which had not yet been performed in public
39.
In 2008, a man altered an old story he had written to resemble Kung Fu Panda, then sued DreamWorks for $12 million. After the court found out he was lying, he was sentenced to 2 years in prison.
40.
TIL that Brazil was a monarchy until Crown Princess Isabel signed a law emancipating all slaves in Brazil in 1888. This was unpopular among the rich plantation owners and the imperial family was deposed in a military coup
41.
TIL water is not colorless. The pure water has a slight blue color that becomes a deeper green as the thickness of the observed sample increases. The blue hue of the water is an intrinsic property and is caused by selective absorption and scattering of white light.
42.
TIL the insulin pumps used by at least 350K Americans with diabetes (couldn't find the global number) were invented as a direct result of some of the earliest NASA technology from the Apollo program.
43.
TIL in 2001, Pizza Hut become the first company in the world to deliver its food to outer space, they paid a million dollars to send a salami pizza to the International Space Station (ISS).
44.
TIL that chocolate was classified as “candy” under the Revenue Acts of 1918 and 1921, and so it was taxed as such. Hershey’s sued to recover about $8,000,000 in taxes by arguing it was “food”, and so had been wrongly taxed. The Supreme Court ruled it was “candy”.
45.
The 'Mona Lisa' painting was created and 'tweaked' over a period of sixteen years (1503 - 1519). Da Vinci never relinquished ownership until his death and instead carried it on the backs of mules as he travelled from Florence to Milan to Rome and finally France.
46.
That silver miners in the 1800s would discard their old work jeans in the mines. These jeans now can be sold for prices over $30,000, Levis going for the most! Many people have started hobbies going into the silver mines in hopes of finding them.
47.
Louis Vitton burn any excess stock at the end of each year to main exclusivity, theft and avoid discount prices
48.
Christopher Columbus' efforts to obtain support for his voyages were hampered not by belief in a flat Earth but by valid worries that the East Indies were farther than he realized. In fact, Columbus grossly underestimated the Earth's circumference and caused he and his crew's near starvation.
49.
TIL there's a material called FOGBANK that's used by the US Department of Energy that's so top secret and compartmentalized, that the government once actually "forgot" how to make it due to a lack of actual records and dwindling institutional knowledge

1.
Shortly after the Korean War, there were few refrigerators or protein-dense foods in South Korea. Koreans would barter with American troops for Spam (canned pork). As South Korea continued to develop, Spam turned into a staple food and it is often a common gift given during Korean Thanksgiving.
2.
US Airways kicked a blind and and his dog off a plane in 2013 after the Dog repositioned itself during a two hour delay. They cancelled the flight after passengers disembarked in protest saying the flight attendant responsible be kicked off instead of the man and his service dog.
3.
TIL That Fermilab used to clean its particle accelerators with a ferret named Felicia, who would run through the tubes with cleaning supplies attached and be rewarded with hamburger meat
4.
A park bench in Bristol was given an official postal address so doctors could register the homeless as patients
5.
Certain oak tree populations will synchronize to produce almost no acorns, only to rain them down excessively the following year, known as a "mast" year. The year preceding the mast year is thought to starve off the mammal populations feeding on the acorns.
6.
TIL that during WW1, the MI5 used Girl Guides to deliver secret messages. They used Girl Guides instead of Boy Scouts because they found out that Boy Scouts weren't efficient enough, boisterous and talkative.
7.
TIL that in 2009 Icelandic engineers accidentally drilled into a magma chamber with temperatures up to 1000C (1832F). Instead of abandoning the well like a previous project in Hawaii, they decided to pump water down and became the most powerful geothermal well ever created.
8.
TIL of the Grand Hotel in Scarborough, England, which had 365 rooms for each day of the year, 52 chimneys for the weeks, 12 floors for months of the year, and was shaped in a V to represent Queen Victoria
9.
TIL that beer bottles are brown as it blocks out the sun's rays and helps preserve the taste. A shortage of brown glass after the Second World War meant higher quality beer makers chose green to distinguish themselves from the companies using clear glass.
10.
TIL that at the age of 17, Steven Spielberg directed a sci-fi film called "Firelight". The budget was $500, and it was shown at a local cinema, with 500 people coming, and tickets costing a dollar each. However, one person paid $2, so the movie made $1, making it Spielberg's first commercial success
11.
TIL that anatomically dogs have two arms and two legs - not four legs; the front legs (arms) have wrist joints and are connected to the skeleton by muscle and the back legs have hip joints and knee caps.
12.
In 1911 The Rigby family included their cat Tom in their census form. 'Tom Cat' was listed as being an 8-year old, married Mouse-Catcher, Soloist and Thief with 16 children. His birthplace was listed as Cheshire and he was described as being 'speechless' in the infirmity section of the form.
13.
TIL that in 2019, Pope Francis received a bottle of Oban malt whiskey while visiting Scottish priests, and declared it to be 'the real holy water'. The BBC captured the footage for a documentary, which was censored by the Vatican.
14.
The Godfather's famous cat-in-lap scene was entirely unscripted. A stray cat randomly wandered onto the set, so Coppola grabbed it and put it in Marlin Brando's lap without a word.
15.
TIL when giraffes are born, they fall six feet on their head, but it's the fall that gets them to start breathing
16.
TIL measles gives your immune system 'amnesia.' Exposure to measles leaves the victim with a strong response to the measles virus, but an increased vulnerability to all other pathogens.
17.
Caffeine is the coffee plant's natural defense mechanism. It leaches into the surrounding soil as leaves from the plant drop and are decomposed into the soil. Since caffeine is toxic to other plants, it prevents other plants from growing around the coffee plant and competing for sunlight.
18.
In 1802, Napoleon added a Polish legion to fight off the slave rebellion in Haiti. However, the Polish army joined the Haitian slaves in the fight for independence. Haiti's first head of state called Polish people "the White Negroes of Europe", which was then regarded as a great honour.
19.
TIL that in the early-20th-century actress, Maude Adams, wanted to do a film version of Peter Pan, but was against doing it in black-and-white. She began working with experts on those obstacles, i.e. lack of color film and inadequate lighting. She earned several electric-light patents in the 1930s.
20.
TIL that Mesopotamians figured out that the Earth orbited the sun about 1,700 years before Copernicus and Newton. They also figured out that the moon causes the tides and that the Earth rotates around its axis.
21.
TIL that Queen Elizabeth II has a body double, Ella Slack, who takes her place during all rehearsals. She is, however, not allowed to sit on the throne at the House of the Lords during the rehearsals. She has never accepted payment for her services, describing it as a "pleasure and an honour."
22.
“The road not taken” by Robert Frost, was actually written to mock an indecisive friend and intended to inspire no one.
23.
TIL that a breed of wool dogs existed on the pacific northwest coast. Indigenous people would keep the dogs isolated on small islands to prevent inter breeding with hunting dogs. The wool dogs were cared for and feed a rich diet of seafood to produce strong yarn to make blankets from.
24.
Dr. John Snow discovered cholera is spread through water and not air. He discovered this during an outbreak in London in 1854 in which hundreds of people became infected and died. The only ones not infected were those who only drank beer, not water
25.
TIL during the Golden Age of Piracy, women sometimes became pirates by disguising themselves as men in an effort to take advantage of freedom and rights that men could only enjoy. Anne and Mary were two famous female pirates of that time who fell in love with each others' disguised manly appearance!
26.
It would take 375,000 Lego bricks stacked one on top of another to destroy the bottom brick. The tower would be nearly 12,000 feet tall.
27.
TIL a man built the world's largest treehouse after claiming God told him to do so. It was 97 feet tall. It took 12 years to build and burned down in 15 minutes in 2019.
28.
TIL that glassblowers in Alexandria, Egypt were the first to produce clear glass around 100 AD through the introduction of manganese dioxide into the glass making process. Thereafter, the Romans began to use clear glass for architectural purposes.
29.
TIL that Einstein's support for pacifist, civil rights and left-wing causes in Europe had drawn suspicion from J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, and after his arrival to America, the Bureau launched what would eventually become a 22-year surveillance campaign since the FBI believed Einstein was a Soviet spy.
30.
That in 1948 the Idaho Department of Fish and Game used surplus parachutes from WWII to drop threatened beavers into a nearby protected area. After some careful calibrations, 76 beavers made the skydive and all but one survived the drop.
31.
TIL that monkeys in Japan learned to wash sweet potatoes in fresh water to clean them. They later switched to washing sweet potatoes in salt water. It is theorized that this is because they like the salty taste more than plain potatoes.
32.
Lafayette’s grave in Paris is filled with dirt from Massachusetts as he wished to be buried in American soil. Additionally, I learned the flag remained in place during WW2 because the Nazis never looked behind the private cemetery’s walls.
33.
During the Second Opium War (1860), French and British troops reached the Imperial Palace in Peking, China. The troops *looted* everything in sight—including five Pekingese dogs. The dogs were taken back to England and one of the dogs was given to Queen Victoria. She named the dog “Looty"
34.
Texas didn’t have safety regulations on natural gas until after a school blew up and killed hundreds of children. Nobody was held accountable, but they passed strict regulations afterwards. It was so bad that even Hitler sent a letter of condolence.
35.
Apple purchased the iPhone.org domain name in 1999, eight years before the official introduction of the iPhone.
36.
TIL in 1977, Ben Cohen was a struggling potter & Jerry Greenfield was getting rejected by medical schools. The pair decided to open a bagel shop, but the cost of bagel machines was too high. As a result, they enrolled in a $5 ice cream making course instead. A year later, they created Ben & Jerry's
37.
TIL the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea is a wildlife haven. While most natural wildlife and rare plants have been killed off in the South, the DMZ hasn’t been touched in over 60 years, which resulted in unique species of flora and fauna to flourish in this area.
38.
Mozart has a pet starling (bird) which could sing part of his piano concerto in G Major. He had bought it from a shop after hearing it sing a phrase from a work he wrote six weeks previously, which had not yet been performed in public
39.
In 2008, a man altered an old story he had written to resemble Kung Fu Panda, then sued DreamWorks for $12 million. After the court found out he was lying, he was sentenced to 2 years in prison.
40.
TIL that Brazil was a monarchy until Crown Princess Isabel signed a law emancipating all slaves in Brazil in 1888. This was unpopular among the rich plantation owners and the imperial family was deposed in a military coup
41.
TIL water is not colorless. The pure water has a slight blue color that becomes a deeper green as the thickness of the observed sample increases. The blue hue of the water is an intrinsic property and is caused by selective absorption and scattering of white light.
42.
TIL the insulin pumps used by at least 350K Americans with diabetes (couldn't find the global number) were invented as a direct result of some of the earliest NASA technology from the Apollo program.
43.
TIL in 2001, Pizza Hut become the first company in the world to deliver its food to outer space, they paid a million dollars to send a salami pizza to the International Space Station (ISS).
44.
TIL that chocolate was classified as “candy” under the Revenue Acts of 1918 and 1921, and so it was taxed as such. Hershey’s sued to recover about $8,000,000 in taxes by arguing it was “food”, and so had been wrongly taxed. The Supreme Court ruled it was “candy”.
45.
The 'Mona Lisa' painting was created and 'tweaked' over a period of sixteen years (1503 - 1519). Da Vinci never relinquished ownership until his death and instead carried it on the backs of mules as he travelled from Florence to Milan to Rome and finally France.
46.
That silver miners in the 1800s would discard their old work jeans in the mines. These jeans now can be sold for prices over $30,000, Levis going for the most! Many people have started hobbies going into the silver mines in hopes of finding them.
47.
Louis Vitton burn any excess stock at the end of each year to main exclusivity, theft and avoid discount prices
48.
Christopher Columbus' efforts to obtain support for his voyages were hampered not by belief in a flat Earth but by valid worries that the East Indies were farther than he realized. In fact, Columbus grossly underestimated the Earth's circumference and caused he and his crew's near starvation.
49.
TIL there's a material called FOGBANK that's used by the US Department of Energy that's so top secret and compartmentalized, that the government once actually "forgot" how to make it due to a lack of actual records and dwindling institutional knowledge

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Shortly after the Korean War, there were few refrigerators or protein-dense foods in South Korea. Koreans would barter with American troops for Spam (canned pork). As South Korea continued to develop, Spam turned into a staple food and it is often a common gift given during Korean Thanksgiving.

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1. Shortly after the Korean War, there were few refrigerators or protein-dense foods in South Korea. Koreans would barter with American troops for Spam (canned pork). As South Korea continued to develop, Spam turned into a staple food and it is often a common gift given during Korean Thanksgiving.

2. US Airways kicked a blind and and his dog off a plane in 2013 after the Dog repositioned itself during a two hour delay. They cancelled the flight after passengers disembarked in protest saying the flight attendant responsible be kicked off instead of the man and his service dog.

3. TIL That Fermilab used to clean its particle accelerators with a ferret named Felicia, who would run through the tubes with cleaning supplies attached and be rewarded with hamburger meat

4. A park bench in Bristol was given an official postal address so doctors could register the homeless as patients

5. Certain oak tree populations will synchronize to produce almost no acorns, only to rain them down excessively the following year, known as a "mast" year. The year preceding the mast year is thought to starve off the mammal populations feeding on the acorns.

6. TIL that during WW1, the MI5 used Girl Guides to deliver secret messages. They used Girl Guides instead of Boy Scouts because they found out that Boy Scouts weren't efficient enough, boisterous and talkative.

7. TIL that in 2009 Icelandic engineers accidentally drilled into a magma chamber with temperatures up to 1000C (1832F). Instead of abandoning the well like a previous project in Hawaii, they decided to pump water down and became the most powerful geothermal well ever created.

8. TIL of the Grand Hotel in Scarborough, England, which had 365 rooms for each day of the year, 52 chimneys for the weeks, 12 floors for months of the year, and was shaped in a V to represent Queen Victoria

9. TIL that beer bottles are brown as it blocks out the sun's rays and helps preserve the taste. A shortage of brown glass after the Second World War meant higher quality beer makers chose green to distinguish themselves from the companies using clear glass.

11. TIL that anatomically dogs have two arms and two legs - not four legs; the front legs (arms) have wrist joints and are connected to the skeleton by muscle and the back legs have hip joints and knee caps.

12. In 1911 The Rigby family included their cat Tom in their census form. 'Tom Cat' was listed as being an 8-year old, married Mouse-Catcher, Soloist and Thief with 16 children. His birthplace was listed as Cheshire and he was described as being 'speechless' in the infirmity section of the form.

13. TIL that in 2019, Pope Francis received a bottle of Oban malt whiskey while visiting Scottish priests, and declared it to be 'the real holy water'. The BBC captured the footage for a documentary, which was censored by the Vatican.

14. The Godfather's famous cat-in-lap scene was entirely unscripted. A stray cat randomly wandered onto the set, so Coppola grabbed it and put it in Marlin Brando's lap without a word.

15. TIL when giraffes are born, they fall six feet on their head, but it's the fall that gets them to start breathing

16. TIL measles gives your immune system 'amnesia.' Exposure to measles leaves the victim with a strong response to the measles virus, but an increased vulnerability to all other pathogens.

17. Caffeine is the coffee plant's natural defense mechanism. It leaches into the surrounding soil as leaves from the plant drop and are decomposed into the soil. Since caffeine is toxic to other plants, it prevents other plants from growing around the coffee plant and competing for sunlight.

18. In 1802, Napoleon added a Polish legion to fight off the slave rebellion in Haiti. However, the Polish army joined the Haitian slaves in the fight for independence. Haiti's first head of state called Polish people "the White Negroes of Europe", which was then regarded as a great honour.

20. TIL that Mesopotamians figured out that the Earth orbited the sun about 1,700 years before Copernicus and Newton. They also figured out that the moon causes the tides and that the Earth rotates around its axis.

21. TIL that Queen Elizabeth II has a body double, Ella Slack, who takes her place during all rehearsals. She is, however, not allowed to sit on the throne at the House of the Lords during the rehearsals. She has never accepted payment for her services, describing it as a "pleasure and an honour."

22. “The road not taken” by Robert Frost, was actually written to mock an indecisive friend and intended to inspire no one.

23. TIL that a breed of wool dogs existed on the pacific northwest coast. Indigenous people would keep the dogs isolated on small islands to prevent inter breeding with hunting dogs. The wool dogs were cared for and feed a rich diet of seafood to produce strong yarn to make blankets from.

24. Dr. John Snow discovered cholera is spread through water and not air. He discovered this during an outbreak in London in 1854 in which hundreds of people became infected and died. The only ones not infected were those who only drank beer, not water

26. It would take 375,000 Lego bricks stacked one on top of another to destroy the bottom brick. The tower would be nearly 12,000 feet tall.

27. TIL a man built the world's largest treehouse after claiming God told him to do so. It was 97 feet tall. It took 12 years to build and burned down in 15 minutes in 2019.

28. TIL that glassblowers in Alexandria, Egypt were the first to produce clear glass around 100 AD through the introduction of manganese dioxide into the glass making process. Thereafter, the Romans began to use clear glass for architectural purposes.

30. That in 1948 the Idaho Department of Fish and Game used surplus parachutes from WWII to drop threatened beavers into a nearby protected area. After some careful calibrations, 76 beavers made the skydive and all but one survived the drop.

31. TIL that monkeys in Japan learned to wash sweet potatoes in fresh water to clean them. They later switched to washing sweet potatoes in salt water. It is theorized that this is because they like the salty taste more than plain potatoes.

32. Lafayette’s grave in Paris is filled with dirt from Massachusetts as he wished to be buried in American soil. Additionally, I learned the flag remained in place during WW2 because the Nazis never looked behind the private cemetery’s walls.

33. During the Second Opium War (1860), French and British troops reached the Imperial Palace in Peking, China. The troops *looted* everything in sight—including five Pekingese dogs. The dogs were taken back to England and one of the dogs was given to Queen Victoria. She named the dog “Looty"

34. Texas didn’t have safety regulations on natural gas until after a school blew up and killed hundreds of children. Nobody was held accountable, but they passed strict regulations afterwards. It was so bad that even Hitler sent a letter of condolence.

35. Apple purchased the iPhone.org domain name in 1999, eight years before the official introduction of the iPhone.

37. TIL the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea is a wildlife haven. While most natural wildlife and rare plants have been killed off in the South, the DMZ hasn’t been touched in over 60 years, which resulted in unique species of flora and fauna to flourish in this area.

38. Mozart has a pet starling (bird) which could sing part of his piano concerto in G Major. He had bought it from a shop after hearing it sing a phrase from a work he wrote six weeks previously, which had not yet been performed in public

39. In 2008, a man altered an old story he had written to resemble Kung Fu Panda, then sued DreamWorks for $12 million. After the court found out he was lying, he was sentenced to 2 years in prison.

40. TIL that Brazil was a monarchy until Crown Princess Isabel signed a law emancipating all slaves in Brazil in 1888. This was unpopular among the rich plantation owners and the imperial family was deposed in a military coup

41. TIL water is not colorless. The pure water has a slight blue color that becomes a deeper green as the thickness of the observed sample increases. The blue hue of the water is an intrinsic property and is caused by selective absorption and scattering of white light.

42. TIL the insulin pumps used by at least 350K Americans with diabetes (couldn't find the global number) were invented as a direct result of some of the earliest NASA technology from the Apollo program.

43. TIL in 2001, Pizza Hut become the first company in the world to deliver its food to outer space, they paid a million dollars to send a salami pizza to the International Space Station (ISS).

44. TIL that chocolate was classified as “candy” under the Revenue Acts of 1918 and 1921, and so it was taxed as such. Hershey’s sued to recover about $8,000,000 in taxes by arguing it was “food”, and so had been wrongly taxed. The Supreme Court ruled it was “candy”.

45. The 'Mona Lisa' painting was created and 'tweaked' over a period of sixteen years (1503 - 1519). Da Vinci never relinquished ownership until his death and instead carried it on the backs of mules as he travelled from Florence to Milan to Rome and finally France.

46. That silver miners in the 1800s would discard their old work jeans in the mines. These jeans now can be sold for prices over $30,000, Levis going for the most! Many people have started hobbies going into the silver mines in hopes of finding them.

47. Louis Vitton burn any excess stock at the end of each year to main exclusivity, theft and avoid discount prices

48. Christopher Columbus' efforts to obtain support for his voyages were hampered not by belief in a flat Earth but by valid worries that the East Indies were farther than he realized. In fact, Columbus grossly underestimated the Earth's circumference and caused he and his crew's near starvation.

49. TIL there's a material called FOGBANK that's used by the US Department of Energy that's so top secret and compartmentalized, that the government once actually "forgot" how to make it due to a lack of actual records and dwindling institutional knowledge

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1.
Shortly after the Korean War, there were few refrigerators or protein-dense foods in South Korea. Koreans would barter with American troops for Spam (canned pork). As South Korea continued to develop, Spam turned into a staple food and it is often a common gift given during Korean Thanksgiving.

2.
US Airways kicked a blind and and his dog off a plane in 2013 after the Dog repositioned itself during a two hour delay. They cancelled the flight after passengers disembarked in protest saying the flight attendant responsible be kicked off instead of the man and his service dog.

3.
TIL That Fermilab used to clean its particle accelerators with a ferret named Felicia, who would run through the tubes with cleaning supplies attached and be rewarded with hamburger meat

4.
A park bench in Bristol was given an official postal address so doctors could register the homeless as patients

5.
Certain oak tree populations will synchronize to produce almost no acorns, only to rain them down excessively the following year, known as a "mast" year. The year preceding the mast year is thought to starve off the mammal populations feeding on the acorns.

6.
TIL that during WW1, the MI5 used Girl Guides to deliver secret messages. They used Girl Guides instead of Boy Scouts because they found out that Boy Scouts weren't efficient enough, boisterous and talkative.

7.
TIL that in 2009 Icelandic engineers accidentally drilled into a magma chamber with temperatures up to 1000C (1832F). Instead of abandoning the well like a previous project in Hawaii, they decided to pump water down and became the most powerful geothermal well ever created.

8.
TIL of the Grand Hotel in Scarborough, England, which had 365 rooms for each day of the year, 52 chimneys for the weeks, 12 floors for months of the year, and was shaped in a V to represent Queen Victoria

9.
TIL that beer bottles are brown as it blocks out the sun's rays and helps preserve the taste. A shortage of brown glass after the Second World War meant higher quality beer makers chose green to distinguish themselves from the companies using clear glass.

11.
TIL that anatomically dogs have two arms and two legs - not four legs; the front legs (arms) have wrist joints and are connected to the skeleton by muscle and the back legs have hip joints and knee caps.

12.
In 1911 The Rigby family included their cat Tom in their census form. 'Tom Cat' was listed as being an 8-year old, married Mouse-Catcher, Soloist and Thief with 16 children. His birthplace was listed as Cheshire and he was described as being 'speechless' in the infirmity section of the form.

13.
TIL that in 2019, Pope Francis received a bottle of Oban malt whiskey while visiting Scottish priests, and declared it to be 'the real holy water'. The BBC captured the footage for a documentary, which was censored by the Vatican.

14.
The Godfather's famous cat-in-lap scene was entirely unscripted. A stray cat randomly wandered onto the set, so Coppola grabbed it and put it in Marlin Brando's lap without a word.

15.
TIL when giraffes are born, they fall six feet on their head, but it's the fall that gets them to start breathing

16.
TIL measles gives your immune system 'amnesia.' Exposure to measles leaves the victim with a strong response to the measles virus, but an increased vulnerability to all other pathogens.

17.
Caffeine is the coffee plant's natural defense mechanism. It leaches into the surrounding soil as leaves from the plant drop and are decomposed into the soil. Since caffeine is toxic to other plants, it prevents other plants from growing around the coffee plant and competing for sunlight.

18.
In 1802, Napoleon added a Polish legion to fight off the slave rebellion in Haiti. However, the Polish army joined the Haitian slaves in the fight for independence. Haiti's first head of state called Polish people "the White Negroes of Europe", which was then regarded as a great honour.

20.
TIL that Mesopotamians figured out that the Earth orbited the sun about 1,700 years before Copernicus and Newton. They also figured out that the moon causes the tides and that the Earth rotates around its axis.

21.
TIL that Queen Elizabeth II has a body double, Ella Slack, who takes her place during all rehearsals. She is, however, not allowed to sit on the throne at the House of the Lords during the rehearsals. She has never accepted payment for her services, describing it as a "pleasure and an honour."

22.
“The road not taken” by Robert Frost, was actually written to mock an indecisive friend and intended to inspire no one.

23.
TIL that a breed of wool dogs existed on the pacific northwest coast. Indigenous people would keep the dogs isolated on small islands to prevent inter breeding with hunting dogs. The wool dogs were cared for and feed a rich diet of seafood to produce strong yarn to make blankets from.

24.
Dr. John Snow discovered cholera is spread through water and not air. He discovered this during an outbreak in London in 1854 in which hundreds of people became infected and died. The only ones not infected were those who only drank beer, not water

26.
It would take 375,000 Lego bricks stacked one on top of another to destroy the bottom brick. The tower would be nearly 12,000 feet tall.

27.
TIL a man built the world's largest treehouse after claiming God told him to do so. It was 97 feet tall. It took 12 years to build and burned down in 15 minutes in 2019.

28.
TIL that glassblowers in Alexandria, Egypt were the first to produce clear glass around 100 AD through the introduction of manganese dioxide into the glass making process. Thereafter, the Romans began to use clear glass for architectural purposes.

30.
That in 1948 the Idaho Department of Fish and Game used surplus parachutes from WWII to drop threatened beavers into a nearby protected area. After some careful calibrations, 76 beavers made the skydive and all but one survived the drop.

31.
TIL that monkeys in Japan learned to wash sweet potatoes in fresh water to clean them. They later switched to washing sweet potatoes in salt water. It is theorized that this is because they like the salty taste more than plain potatoes.

32.
Lafayette’s grave in Paris is filled with dirt from Massachusetts as he wished to be buried in American soil. Additionally, I learned the flag remained in place during WW2 because the Nazis never looked behind the private cemetery’s walls.

33.
During the Second Opium War (1860), French and British troops reached the Imperial Palace in Peking, China. The troops looted everything in sight—including five Pekingese dogs. The dogs were taken back to England and one of the dogs was given to Queen Victoria. She named the dog “Looty"

34.
Texas didn’t have safety regulations on natural gas until after a school blew up and killed hundreds of children. Nobody was held accountable, but they passed strict regulations afterwards. It was so bad that even Hitler sent a letter of condolence.

35.
Apple purchased the iPhone.org domain name in 1999, eight years before the official introduction of the iPhone.

37.
TIL the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea is a wildlife haven. While most natural wildlife and rare plants have been killed off in the South, the DMZ hasn’t been touched in over 60 years, which resulted in unique species of flora and fauna to flourish in this area.

38.
Mozart has a pet starling (bird) which could sing part of his piano concerto in G Major. He had bought it from a shop after hearing it sing a phrase from a work he wrote six weeks previously, which had not yet been performed in public

39.
In 2008, a man altered an old story he had written to resemble Kung Fu Panda, then sued DreamWorks for $12 million. After the court found out he was lying, he was sentenced to 2 years in prison.

40.
TIL that Brazil was a monarchy until Crown Princess Isabel signed a law emancipating all slaves in Brazil in 1888. This was unpopular among the rich plantation owners and the imperial family was deposed in a military coup

41.
TIL water is not colorless. The pure water has a slight blue color that becomes a deeper green as the thickness of the observed sample increases. The blue hue of the water is an intrinsic property and is caused by selective absorption and scattering of white light.

42.
TIL the insulin pumps used by at least 350K Americans with diabetes (couldn't find the global number) were invented as a direct result of some of the earliest NASA technology from the Apollo program.

43.
TIL in 2001, Pizza Hut become the first company in the world to deliver its food to outer space, they paid a million dollars to send a salami pizza to the International Space Station (ISS).

44.
TIL that chocolate was classified as “candy” under the Revenue Acts of 1918 and 1921, and so it was taxed as such. Hershey’s sued to recover about $8,000,000 in taxes by arguing it was “food”, and so had been wrongly taxed. The Supreme Court ruled it was “candy”.

45.
The 'Mona Lisa' painting was created and 'tweaked' over a period of sixteen years (1503 - 1519). Da Vinci never relinquished ownership until his death and instead carried it on the backs of mules as he travelled from Florence to Milan to Rome and finally France.

46.
That silver miners in the 1800s would discard their old work jeans in the mines. These jeans now can be sold for prices over $30,000, Levis going for the most! Many people have started hobbies going into the silver mines in hopes of finding them.

47.
Louis Vitton burn any excess stock at the end of each year to main exclusivity, theft and avoid discount prices

48.
Christopher Columbus' efforts to obtain support for his voyages were hampered not by belief in a flat Earth but by valid worries that the East Indies were farther than he realized. In fact, Columbus grossly underestimated the Earth's circumference and caused he and his crew's near starvation.

49.
TIL there's a material called FOGBANK that's used by the US Department of Energy that's so top secret and compartmentalized, that the government once actually "forgot" how to make it due to a lack of actual records and dwindling institutional knowledge