Today I Learned 🎓

07 July 2025 12:49

TIL ancient Greeks before the pre-classical era condoned piracy as a viable profession. It was widespread and "regarded as an entirely honourable way of making a living". [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

07 July 2025 10:49

TIL the American food corporation General Mills had an engineering division that built surveillance balloons that spied on Eastern Bloc countries, and built a deep-sea submersible that surveyed the Titanic wreck and helped recover a hydrogen bomb from the Mediterranean Ocean. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

07 July 2025 09:49

TIL Michael Jordan earned $300 million in 2024, which topped the $260 million Cristiano Ronaldo earned last year as the world’s highest-paid active athlete. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

07 July 2025 04:49

TIL by embracing a low-cost production model & taking less money upfront, executive producers Rob McElhenney, Glenn Howerton, & Charlie Day were given a "sizable ownership stake" in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. By 2011, through just 7 seasons, the trio's stake was already worth close to $60m. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

07 July 2025 03:49

TIL of the Mississippi Miracle. In 2013, Mississippi students were performing a full grade level below the national average. After a complete overhaul of their educational program, including rejection of the Whole Language literacy method, Mississippi is now a half-grade ahead of the average student [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

07 July 2025 01:49

TIL that, despite having centuries-old "blue laws" that prevent most stores from being open on Sundays, Paramus, New Jersey generates over $6 billion in retail sales, the most of any ZIP Code in the U.S. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

06 July 2025 22:49

TIL A man named Tommy Thompson is being held indefinitely in jail until he returns gold coins he took and sold from the shipwreck of the SS Central America [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

06 July 2025 19:49

TIL Windows Task Manager was originally an external side project developed at home by Microsoft developer David Plummer. He donated the project to Microsoft to be used as part of the main product build of Windows in 1995. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

06 July 2025 19:49

TIL about "Conan the Bacterium", an organism that's been around for about a billion years more than us, can survive almost anything and will likely outlast us all. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

06 July 2025 17:49

TIL of Julian the Apostate (nephew of Constantine the Great) the last non-Christian ruler of the Roman Empire, who rejected Christianity & promoted Neoplatonic Hellenism, believing it necessary to restore ancient Roman values & traditions to save it from dissolution at the expense of Christianity. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

06 July 2025 15:49

TIL in August 2007, 17-year-old George Hotz became the first person to remove the SIM lock on an iPhone. He then proceeded to trade the second (8GB) iPhone that he unlocked to Terry Daidone, the founder of CertiCell, for a Nissan 350Z and three more 8GB iPhones. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

06 July 2025 14:49

TIL about Rex 84, a scenario and drill developed by the Reagan Administration to detain (in FEMA-run concentration camps) large numbers of United States residents deemed to be "national security threats" under the guise of the president declaring a national emergency. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

06 July 2025 12:49

TIL that old Celtic, English, and Germanic folk would participate in an event called “flyting”: where two people would poetically throw insults and crude humor at each other in a duel of dictionary skill; it was essentially the earliest form of rap battling [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

06 July 2025 08:49

TIL that Silentó, who's 2015 debut single "Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)" peaked at number three on the US Billboard Hot 100 when he was 17 years old, was arrested and charged with the murder of his cousin in 2021. He plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter in 2025, and was sentenced to 30 years in prison. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

06 July 2025 05:49

TIL at his second exhibition, 7-year-old Kieron Williamson sold out all 16 of his paintings in 14 minutes for a total of £18,200. At a subsequent exhibition in 2010, his paintings sold out in 30 minutes for £150,000. By 2013, at the age of 10, he had earned an estimated £1.5m from his artwork. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

07 July 2025 11:49

TIL a Hollywood executive once wanted Harriet Tubman to be played by Julia Roberts because “It was so long ago. No one is going to know the difference’” [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

07 July 2025 09:49

TIL that Australia has forced gambling companies to display slogans in their ads like “You win some. You lose more” and “What's gambling really costing you?” instead of the standard “Gamble Responsibly” [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

07 July 2025 05:49

TIL deaf britians and deaf americans can't understand eachothers' signs [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

07 July 2025 03:49

TIL a stray dog followed Dion Leonard, who was running in a week-long ultramarathon in the Gobi Desert, for 77 miles of the 155-mile race. At night the dog even started to join him in his tent. He named her Gobi, & after the race, he crowdfunded the £5K needed to bring her back to Scotland with him. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

07 July 2025 02:49

TIL about “Christine”, a mysterious person who repeatedly calls hairdressers across New Zealand and Australia and sets up appointments, which are always no-shows. “Christine” asks the hairdresser to describe, in great detail, various scenarios involving women getting their hair shaved or styled. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

07 July 2025 00:49

TIL that sliced bread was first sold on 7 July 1928, by the Chillicothe Baking Company in Missouri. It was hailed as “the greatest forward step in baking since bread was wrapped” and by 1933, 80% of US bread was pre-sliced, leading to the popular idiom “the greatest thing since sliced bread.” [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

06 July 2025 20:49

TIL that Catherine of Braganza, wife of England’s King Charles II, used to sip tea as part of her daily routine, she came from Portugal where tea was already popular. The young queen's habit of sipping tea made the beverage popular in England as a social drinkable rather than as a health tonic. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

06 July 2025 19:49

TIL the concept of cow tipping, the purported activity of sneaking up on any unsuspecting or sleeping upright cow and pushing it over for entertainment, apparently developed in the 1970s, though tales of animals that cannot rise if they fall has historical antecedents dating to the Roman Empire. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

06 July 2025 18:49

TIL that the second most translated book behind only the Bible is The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

06 July 2025 17:49

TIL that a British married couple survived almost 4 months adrift in the Pacific Ocean on a rubber raft. They survived drinking rainwater and eating raw fish and birds. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

06 July 2025 14:49

TIL that Göbekli Tepe in Turkey is the oldest known temple complex in the world, built over 11,000 years ago, thousands of years before Stonehenge or the Pyramids, and it was constructed by prehistoric hunter-gatherers before the invention of farming or writing. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

06 July 2025 13:49

TIL after hearing her employer and lover who admired the Marquis de Sade claim that a woman couldn't write an erotic novel; writer Anne Desclos wrote one that was both massively successful and caused the government to pursue obscenity charges because of the sadomasochistic themes therein. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

06 July 2025 09:49

TIL Gary Webb exposed CIA ties to the crack epidemic in 1996. Though discredited at the time, later reports confirmed parts of his story. He died in 2004 from two gunshot wounds to the head, ruled a suicide but many found it suspicious given his revelations. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

06 July 2025 07:49

TIL that in 1987, a farmer in Argentina stumbled upon a giant tibia bone sticking out of the ground. It belonged to a massive dinosaur now known as Argentinosaurus, which some scientists consider the largest land animal to ever exist [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

06 July 2025 04:49

TIL of the existence of a popular UK character called Mr Blobby. Who has been in television since 1992 and has a No. 1 single. [Source]