20 Interesting Trivia You May Not Be Aware Of From The “Today I Learned” Group

One thing we have quite definitively realized is that there is something new to be learned almost every single day. That’s why the ‘Today I Learned’ phrase is quite consistently trending online. For a species that feeds on information voraciously, this trend provides a collection of tasty edibles for the brain. If you love a good bout of trivia, scroll below for some of the rarest nuggets of information we could find from an online group, under the moniker “Today I Learned”, dedicated to collecting facts that you may not have heard of until now.

#1

Image source: Blueberryroid, Pixabay

TIL Officials went to congratulate Sogen Kato, the oldest living man in Tokyo, on his 111th birthday. Upon arriving to his house, a mummified body wearing underwear and pajamas was lying in his bed. He had been dead for 30 years but his family kept the secret to keep receiving his pension.

#2

Image source: -WhatCouldGoWrong, wash

TIL Missy, a 100lb injured dog abandoned by her owner on Mount Bierstadt in Clear Creek County as a storm closed in, found by hikers a few days later who treated her but couldn’t rescue her, they posted her location on a climbers’ forum and an epic rescue journey began to rescue a dog from a mountain.

#3

Image source: Pfeffer_Prinz, lookandlearn

TIL the first known résumé was written by Leonardo da Vinci, when applying to be a military engineer for the Duke of Milan. It’s mainly just a list of his designs for siege weapons (including trebuchets). He briefly mentions his art: “In painting, I can do everything possible.” He got the job.

#4

Image source: casualphilosopher1, Agata Bogusz

TIL that free divers’ heart rates can drop as low as 11 beats per minute(as low as that of diving seals, whales and dolphins), in order to preserve blood-oxygen levels.

 

#5

Image source: jyang1, mikoto.raw Photographer

TIL more than 300 million people globally don’t have a single friend, according to Gallup data.

#6

Image source: Naturallynoble, Otto Palmlöf

TIL that in the Vietnam war the US conducted a psychological warfare operation which used loudspeakers to play eerie sounds and altered voices to represent the spirits of dead N. Vietnamese soldiers so as to undermine their morale. Operation Wandering Soul.

#7

Image source: Standard-Assist-5793, vegasnews

TIL In 1998 part of the hull of the Titanic was recovered and is displayed in a casino. Visitors are given a ‘boarding pass’ with the name of a passenger and find out the fate of their passenger at the end of the exhibition.

#8

Image source: BeeIsBack, Bestbe Models

TIL that the number of abs you have is genetic and varies from person to person. The number of abs you have depends on the number of rings of abdominal tissue that someone is born with, and some people can actually have 10-pack abs.

#9

Image source: idiocrites, pxhere

TIL that when bears hibernate, they “hold it in” for almost half a year. This is due to a fecal plug that forms in their lower intestine that prevents them from pooping while hibernating.

#10

Image source: S-XMPA, galerie123

TIL movie theater sound quality was greatly improved thanks to Star Wars. Sound across movie theaters was generally inconsistent or low quality, George Lucas then co-created THX to fully project the audio quality of Return of the Jedi.

#11

Image source: KTthemajicgoat, Martinvl

TIL the USA was supposed to adopt the metric system but the ship carrying the standardized meter and kilogram was hijacked by pirates in 1793 and the measurements never made it to the States.

#12

Image source: Diplodocus114, Pixabay

TIL How toxic a polar bear liver actually is. The entire liver contains enough vitamin A to kill as many as 52 adults! If you spread it out and ate just enough to get your RDA every day, that liver would last you 143 years!

#13

Image source: BringsHomeBones, ig.ft.com

TIL the song Baby, It’s Cold Outside was written by Frank Losser to sing with his wife, Lynn Garland, at parties to indicate to guests that it was time to leave.

#14

Image source: Pfeffer_Prinz

TIL the Cherokee writing system was made by one man, Sequoyah. It’s one of the only times in history that someone in a non-literate group invented an official script from scratch. Within 25 years, nearly 100% of Cherokee were literate, and it inspired dozens of indigenous scripts around the world.

#15

Image source: accidentaldeity, gi.alaska.edu

TIL in 1947, the Canadian town of Snag, Yukon, saw a temperature of -83F (-64C). It was so cold, you could hear people speaking 4 miles away, along with other phenomena such as people’s breath turning to powder and falling straight to the ground and river ice booming like gun shots.

#16

Image source: drtrillphill, parentmap

TIL a school social worker noticed a young Jimi Hendrix’s habit of emulating a guitar with a broom and attempted to get school funding to buy him a guitar. Her request was denied.

#17

Image source: blueberrisorbet, polygon

TIL the game Oregon Trail was developed by 3 college students trying to teach history creatively. The first version was coded in just 10 days in 1971 and played by middle schoolers for 5 days. The code was given to an educational nonprofit in 1974, and the creators never profited from the game.

#18

Image source: moby323, jimmywayne

TIL that when Californians wanted to name a new city after San Francisco businessman William Ralston, he declined and said he was not worthy of the honor. So instead they named the city in honor of his modesty: Modesto, California.

#19

TIL The writer for “Die Hard with a Vengeance” was investigated by the FBI after they revealed that his story’s plan of robbing the Federal Reserve through a breached subway wall would have worked.

Image source: fortifier22

#20

TIL that an audio recording of a lock being opened provides enough data to reproduce the key required to open that lock, even with a cell phone’s microphone.

Image source: DAL59