Score

Title

27710

TIL about the Oh-My-God Particle, a proton traveling at about 99.99999999999999999999951% the speed of light. It is the fastest moving object ever recorded and as it hit the atmosphere it carried the kinetic energy equivalent to a baseball traveling at 50MPH, all in one particle.

36353

TIL deer mothers will instinctively come to the rescue of a crying human baby.

5070

TIL Bea Arthur from the TV Show "Golden Girls" was a Marine truck driver in WW2 serving in Marine Corps and Navy air stations in Virginia and North Carolina reaching the rank of Staff Sergeant.

4907

TIL that the slow-motion footage of the forest chase scene in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows was produced by one of the Slow Mo Guys

1539

TIL that in ancient Ireland, sucking a king’s nipples was a gesture of submission. Failed kings would have their nipples brutally cut to dethrone them and make them incapable of holding kingship.

1091

TIL following the suicide of a the famous Korean actor Choi Jin-sil the frequency of suicide in Korea increased by 162,2% for 3 weeks confirming the "Werther effect," that a suicide can cause others to also commit suicide

498

TIL Prince is the sole credit on his first album. He sang all the parts and played all the instruments, including acoustic and electric guitars, acoustic piano and Fender Rhodes piano, synth bass, various keyboard synths by Oberheim, Moog and Arp, orchestra bells, drums, percussion and bass guitar.

832

TIL Robert Hohman, CEO and cofounder of Glassdoor, quit his job to do nothing but play World of Warcraft for a year and only founded the company after hitting the maximum level in the game

64493

TIL that The Sex Pistols were asked by their manager to write a song called "Submission", hoping they would write about bondage. Instead they wrote a song about a submarine mission.

17548

TIL that actor Bob Odenkirk in Better Call Saul was fully trained as a Cinnabon employee to prepare for his role, and even refused a hand double - insisting on using his own hands in the bun-preparing montages

532

TIL After Pearl Harbor was attacked a Boeing 314 Clipper, in New Zealand at the time, was told by Pan Am to return to San Francisco by flying westwards. The total flight time was 209 hours and the plane covered 31,500 miles becoming the first commercial airliner to fly around the world.

51589

TIL The 8 hour workday was devised so that workers could evenly divide 24 hours between: "Eight hours' labour, Eight hours' recreation, Eight hours' rest"

706

TIL that there's a cattle station in Australia that is bigger than the entire country of Israel.

465

TIL the Colosseum was built in just 10 years

218

TIL There is a still-commissioned U.S. Navy ship that has been held captive by North Korea for 50 years; the USS Pueblo.

174

TIL the only non-military dog to be awarded the Dickin Medal for bravery, was a collie named Sheila. In 1944 she tracked down 4 injured US airmen on a mountain during a blizzard, after their B-17 crashed. She led locals to their location, who evacuated them before the bombs detonated shorty after.

152

TIL that each year, the fountains of the U.S. Navy Memorial are salted with water from the Seven Seas in a ritual with ancient roots called "The Blessing of the Fleets." After the ceremony, attendants feast on traditional Navy Bean Soup.

20060

TIL bottled water brands Perrier, S. Pellegrino and Vittel are all owned by the same company, Nestle. In total Nestle sells water under 50 different brands, including Poland Spring and Zephyrhills.

89

TIL that Basil Zaharoff sold the Greek government a submarine, then told the Turkish government that the Greeks had a submarine, Turkey then bought 2 submarines. He then told the same to the Russian government who later bought 2 submarines as well. None of the submarines worked.

3176

TIL that the United Kingdom has invested in the world's biggest stockpile of plutonium (well over 100 tonnes) that could either provide us with thousands of years of unlimited energy or become a massive financial and environmental white elephant as nobody can agree on what to do with it.

12358

TIL if you have a bar with a gang problem they'll be gone within three weeks if every third song played is from a female vocalist, according to Jon Taffer from Bar Rescue.

102

TIL that astronaut Buzz Aldrin submitted a travel voucher for $31.31 after he returned from the moon

494

TIL that North Korean college coders beat Stanford University in a 2016 competition

57

TIL donkeys can be used to guard livestock from coyotes and wolves. They instinctively attack, by biting and kicking and if they get the chance they will even kill.

22986

TIL A very tired chemist once spilled UK's entire supply of plutonium(10mg) on a table, and in order to recover it, used a saw to cut out that section of the table, then burned it. He recovered 9.5mg of the plutonium from the ashes.

73029

TIL John F. Kennedy enjoyed a "privileged childhood of elite private schools, sailboats, servants and summer homes" during the Great Depression. He later claimed that he only learned about the Great Depression in the books he read while attending Harvard.

99

TIL there was a shark called a Helicoprion, which had a lower row of teeth shaped like a buzzsaw.

425

TIL the Empire State building in New York stands on the site of the original Astoria hotel, which was built and owned by John Jacob Astor IV. Astor was of the richest men alive in his time, and left behind an estate of $87 million upon his death in 1912. Also, he died on the Titanic.

85

TIL Happy Feet originally included a plotline involving penguin-like aliens, who were planning to siphon off the planet's resources gradually, placing the humans in the same light as the penguins. This would be dropped in the last year of production.

51

TIL ships that were constructed before 1945 are the primary source of steel that is not contaminated with radioactive nuclides. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki along with nuclear tests and disasters have polluted the atmospheric air that is being used for the steel production.

23761

TIL In 552AD two monks successfully smuggled silkworm eggs in their walking sticks from China to the Byzantine Empire, essentially ending the silk monopolies of China and Persia, and bringing silk manufacture to Europe.

46

TIL a very nearsighted person can see more or less normally underwater because of the faulty refractive index of the eye is negated by the waters refractive index

47

TIL Flea, the bassist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, keeps over 200,000 bees in his backyard that he calls "Flea's Bees"

61

TIL of Laika, the first dog to go into space. The satellite that transported Laika was never intended to return, and Laika died within hours of leaving Earth. The space mission sparked a debate across the globe on the mistreatment of animals and animal testing for scientific causes.

76

TIL That one gram of antimatter would have a greater explosive power than both nuclear bombs dropped on Japan combined, but would take the Cern Supercollider around 100 Billion years to create

52

TIL that Insane Clown Posse were once on a Disney owned record label. On the scheduled day of release for their record "The Great Milenko" however, Disney recalled all 100,000 shipped units upon discovering the graphic nature of the album's lyrical content.

58

TIL that Wright Laboratory won the 2007 Ig Noble Peace Prize for "instigating research & development on a chemical weapon" called 'The Gay Bomb' it was a bomb that when used, discharges female sex pheromones over enemy forces in order to make them sexually attracted to each other.

38

TIL that the first use of a detective in literature was used by Edgar Allan Poe. His short story, 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue', inspired the creation of Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot

808

TIL That for Black Sabbath's best selling album "Paranoid" the band booked two days in the studio but only used one, recording the entire album in just a few hours.

26428

TIL of Yosuke the lost African grey parrot who was reunited with his owners after reciting their full address and his name to the veterinarian who found him. "I'm Mr. Yosuke Nakamura," the bird told the veterinarian.