Today I Learned 🎓

24 June 2025 18:49

TIL that in 2020, an Oregon man driving a stolen car crashed into a woman driving another stolen car [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

24 June 2025 16:49

TIL John F. Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby, and Abraham Zapruder all died or were declared dead at the same hospital: Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

24 June 2025 15:49

TIL comedian Redd Foxx would often pretend to have a heart attack and pratfall for laughs. Years later, Foxx would have a heart attack for real, with many people thinking it was a bit as he fell to the ground. He died from the heart attack. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

24 June 2025 13:49

TIL the first words ever spoken in a feature film were, “Wait a minute, wait a minute. You ain’t heard nothin’ yet!” — delivered by Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer (1927). [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

24 June 2025 12:49

TIL the antechinus is a small, mouse-like marsupial from Australia. During mating season, the male engages in frenzied 12-hour mating marathons with multiple females, pushing his body to the brink. The stress is so extreme that it often leads to organ failure and death shortly afterward. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

24 June 2025 10:49

TIL that in its original run, The Jetsons only aired 24 episodes across a span of six months from 1962-1963, before being cancelled due to low ratings. Reruns got such high viewership over the years that in 1985, 51 more episodes were produced. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

24 June 2025 06:49

TIL Studies show patients suffering from kidney stones often passed the stones while riding the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

24 June 2025 03:49

TIL 2055 brown recluse spiders were removed from a house in Kansas. The spiders had four human roommates who had lived in their house for many years and were never bitten, despite frequent encounters with the spiders. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

24 June 2025 02:49

TIL Amazon Alexa recordings were successfully used as evidence in the conviction of a murder suspect in 2023. "Detectives discovered voice commands made by White and his wife at the time of the murder had been saved." [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

24 June 2025 00:49

TIL Spanish entomologist Luis Méndez de Torres was the first to realize, in the late 1500s, the "king" bee was, in fact, a female. But he didn't call it "queen," but "mistress of the swarm." [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

23 June 2025 23:49

TIL: G-spot means "Gräfenberg spot". Ernst Gräfenberg was a German physician and scientist who studied the role of the woman's urethra in orgasm [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

23 June 2025 19:49

TIL that on June 5th, 1967, a cook on a fishing boat south of Iceland saw a column of smoke in the distance. Moving to assist, the crew approached only to find that it was a volcanic eruption in the middle of the ocean. The eruption lasted 7 months, resulting in the creation of a new island, Surtsey [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

23 June 2025 16:49

TIL Employees working for movie theaters in the US are exempted from federal law requiring overtime pay. The clause within the 'Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938' establishing "exemption for any employee employed by an establishment which is a motion picture theater" still remains in place today. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

23 June 2025 14:49

TIL that in 2003 Hideo Kojima designed a Game Boy Advance game with a light sensor built into the cartridge. The player's in-game weapon is charged by taking the game outside and playing it in natural sunlight, and game mechanics change when it's dark out in your area [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

23 June 2025 13:49

TIL about Pakistan International Airlines Flight 8303, whose pilots tried to land despite not being in a safe position for it, and with their landing gear up. The resulting belly landing damaged the engines so much that when they tried to take off again, it crashed into the city killing 98 people. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

24 June 2025 17:49

TIL that San Francisco had a population of 200 people in 1846. The California gold rush grew the population to 36,000 within six years. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

24 June 2025 16:49

TIL of Bill Morgan, who survived clinical death, won the lottery, and then won again while reenacting it on camera. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

24 June 2025 14:49

TIL that Harold Ray Presley - cousin of Elvis and a Mississippi sheriff in the 90s - was mortally wounded in a shootout in 2001, and that an 8,000 pound monument was erected in his honor. In 2008, the monument disappeared under suspicious circumstances, and its whereabouts are still unknown. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

24 June 2025 13:49

TIL that Kabang, a stray dog Aspin from Philippines, became a national hero in 2011 after she deliberately leapt in front of a speeding motorcycle to save her owner’s daughter and niece, resulting to losing her upper snout in the process. She passed away in 2021 at age 13. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

24 June 2025 11:49

TIL an African Grey Parrot named Alex was the first non-human animal to ever ask a question when he looked in a mirror and asked “What color?” learning the word “grey” [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

24 June 2025 07:49

TIL that the founder of Lipton Tea, Sir Thomas Lipton, was a lifelong bachelor who had a secret relationship with his shop assistant, William Love [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

24 June 2025 05:49

TIL that many U.S. states secretly obtain the drugs used in lethal injections from small compounding pharmacies whose identities are hidden by state secrecy laws. These drugs are produced under less federal oversight, resulting in variable quality, and sometimes leading to botched executions. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

24 June 2025 02:49

TIL Comet Hale-Bopp was independently discovered in 1995 by two people: astronomer Alan Hale and amateur stargazer Thomas Bopp. Both immediately alerted the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams to report their discovery. Hale sent an e-mail, while Bopp sent a Western Union telegram. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

24 June 2025 01:49

TIL in 1977, Stu Ungar was bet $100,000 by Bob Stupak (a casino owner) that he could not count down half of a six-deck shoe and then successfully determine what the last 156 cards are. Ungar won the bet. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

23 June 2025 23:49

TIL in Sept 2023 MGM Resorts International & Caesars Entertainment were both hit by ransomware attacks from the same group. Caesars paid a $15m ransom instead of the $30m the attackers had demanded, however MGM refused to pay & had its operations shut down for several days which led to a $100m loss. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

23 June 2025 20:49

TIL about Mats Järlström, a man who was fined for engineering in Oregon when he challenged the traffic light timing. He eventually won against Oregon’s 'Title Laws' and was proven right about the traffic light timing being too short for safety. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

23 June 2025 18:49

TIL, 300 in-person line judges will be replaced by electronic line calling systems this year for the first time in the tournament's 147-year history of The Wimbledon Championships. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

23 June 2025 15:49

TIL the 2021 Astroworld Festival crowd crush event was not a random tragedy, but a result of several logistical decisions made by LiveNation including overselling the festival, security breaches at admissions, and poor crowd flow management [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

23 June 2025 14:49

TIL Europe's 2003 heat wave killed 70,000+ people. In France, 15,000 died as morgues overflowed — forcing authorities to store bodies in refrigerated trucks [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

23 June 2025 09:49

TIL the deer around Nara, the ancient early capital of Japan, are sacred in Shintoism for being messengers of the gods. They have been tame for centuries from humans not hunting them. They are popular with guests who buy “deer cookies” to feed them. [Source]