Today I Learned 🎓

03 July 2025 07:49

TIL of Janet Parker from the University of Birmingham Medical School. She likely contracted smallpox via air ducts in her office via a lab where researchers kept samples. Within 4 weeks she was dead, her father died of a heart attack visiting her in the hospital and her boss cut his own throat. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

03 July 2025 04:49

TIL that the movie Mars Attacks! was based on a 1962 trading card series featuring graphic art of Martians vaporizing soldiers, abducting women, and destroying cities, which caused public outrage and was pulled from shelves. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

03 July 2025 03:49

TIL, that when Nelson Mandela left prison, one of the first places he visited was Ireland but he was only allowed to give a speach to the Dáil, one of the two houses of the Irish parliment, as speaking to both was a right reserved for Heads of State. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

03 July 2025 01:49

TIL the oldest bones found in Antarctica belonged to an indigenous woman from Chile who died in her early 20s. Found on a beach, it's estimated she came to Antarctica between 1819 and 1825. There are no surviving documents explaining how or why a young woman came to be in Antarctica during this era [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

02 July 2025 23:49

TIL Steam locomotives could replenish its water supply while in motion using track pans, long troughs filled with water and a retractable water scooper that would be lowered. The speed of the forward motion forces the water up the scoop pipes into the tanks or tender. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

02 July 2025 21:49

TIL that it is possible for additional roadways to create more traffic rather than alleviate it, known as Braess' Paradox [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

02 July 2025 19:49

TIL that at its real estate bubble peak Tokyo's total real estate value was priced more than the entire USA landmass [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

02 July 2025 18:49

TIL about the "Phantom of Heilbronn," a mysterious female serial killer suspect who baffled German police for years,
until it turned out the DNA evidence was contaminated by factory workers making the cotton swabs used in forensic tests. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

02 July 2025 17:49

TIL about Hitoshi Imamura, Japanese WWII General who thought his punishment was too light, so he built a replica of his prison and stayed there until his death [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

02 July 2025 14:49

TIL only one Navy ship in active duty have sank an enemy ship: USS Constitution. (also the oldest active Navy ship) [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

02 July 2025 12:49

TIL the UK tried to ban raves in 1994, with an act criminalizing gatherings where '"music" includes sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats.' [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

02 July 2025 10:49

TIL that actor Joe Spinell was hired to play a hitman in The Godfather and Francis Ford Coppola liked him so much that he hired him on as a day player for 6 months of shooting. He wound up being the second highest paid actor in the film after Marlon Brando [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

02 July 2025 04:49

TIL that, immediately after John F. Kennedy was assassinated, an order came down from the Secretary of the Navy to destroy all personal logs associated with the use of the presidential yacht USS Sequoia during the Kennedy Administration. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

02 July 2025 02:49

TIL In 1907, Grace Oakeshott, a British women's rights activist, faked her death to run off with her extramarital lover. It seems her husband was in on the plan, as both found it preferable to a divorce. Grace and her lover moved to New Zealand where they had 3 children before Grace's death in 1929. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

02 July 2025 00:49

TIL that despite Antarctica going undiscovered for hundreds of millenia the first two claims of its discovery occured only 3 days apart. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

03 July 2025 06:49

TIL that in January 2010, the city of Black Hawk, Colorado forbade riding bicycles in their streets (except for town locals). The law was later reversed by the Colorado Supreme Court in 2013, primarily on grounds that Black Hawk never provided alternative paths for bicycle riders. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

03 July 2025 04:49

TIL Female frogs fake death to avoid mating with male frogs they don’t find attractive. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

03 July 2025 01:49

TIL of the Desert of Maine, 20+ acres of ancient glacial sand dunes in the midst of a pine forest [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

03 July 2025 00:49

TIL that Dr. Sigmund Rascher, who conducted inhuman experiments on concentration camp inmates, was executed at the end of World War II...not for his war crimes, but on the direct orders of Heinrich Himmler, for "financial irregularities" and other actions which embarrassed Himmler. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

02 July 2025 22:49

TIL that in 1462, Vlad the Impaler (Dracula) stopped an Ottoman invasion by creating a 3km “forest” of 20,000 impaled corpses, including soldiers, women, children, and even livestock. The stench was so overwhelming, the Ottomans turned back without a fight. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

02 July 2025 20:49

TIL the US has had four presidential yachts in its history [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

02 July 2025 19:49

TIL in 2003 hepatitis from green onions sickened 650 in the Pittsburgh area who ate at Chi-Chi's, a Tex-Mex restaurant chain. Four died and 485 were hospitalized. It led to Chi-Chi's going out of business nationwide in 2004. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

02 July 2025 17:49

TIL A tautological place name is a place name where different parts of the name have the same meaning, for example, "Lake Chad" (Lake Lake), "Mississippi River" (Big River River), "Sahara Desert" (Deserts Desert) [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

02 July 2025 16:49

TIL that Colonel Sanders once studied Law and served as a Justice of the Peace in Little Rock, but his legal career ended abruptly after he got into a courtroom brawl with a client. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

02 July 2025 13:49

TIL Columbo's signature catchphrase "Just one more thing" originated because a scene was too short, and the writers didn't want to retype the script on a typewriter, so they just had him return and add the line at the end as if he'd forgotten something. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

02 July 2025 11:49

TIL that in 2003 Iraqi Insurgents attempted to shoot down a European Air Transport Airbus A300 cargo plane flying from Baghdad to Bahrain, but ultimately failed when the plane was able to return to Baghdad and land with severe damage. The firing of the missle was all caught on camera! [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

02 July 2025 05:49

TIL that the phenomenon where a landline phone's cord forms a kink and gets twisted in the opposite direction of the rest of the cord is called "tendril perversion" [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

02 July 2025 03:49

TIL Dolphins can only hold their breath for 10 minutes [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

02 July 2025 02:49

TIL that Stephen King was so obsessed with Lou Bega’s Mambo No. 5 that his wife threatened to divorce him over it. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

01 July 2025 23:49

TIL of Beatrice Muller, a New Jersey widow who became a permanet resident of the Cunard ocean liner Queen Elizabeth 2. When her husband retired the pair went on the ship's world cruise every year until he died on board in 1999. From 2000 she lived permanently on the ship until it was retired in 2008 [Source]