Today I Learned 🎓

08 May 2024 17:00

TIL that between the 1920s and the 1990s, around half a million US prisoners underwent state-sanctioned plastic surgery in attempts to rehabilitate repeat offenders based on the idea that appearance impacted the likelihood of reoffending. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

08 May 2024 15:00

TIL In 1954, the CIA ordered Carcano rifle ammo for anti-communist forces. The leftover ammo and rifles were re-imported and sold wholesale to the public, including to Lee Harvey Oswald, who used them to assassinate JFK. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

08 May 2024 12:01

TIL Aroldis Chapman's 105 mph pitch isn't the fastest of all time. When Nolan Ryan played, pitches weren't clocked until they were 10 feet from the plate. So with the proper adjustments, if thrown today, Ryan's 100.9 mph pitch (in the 9th inning) in 1974 would've clocked at about 108.5 mph. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

08 May 2024 08:01

TIL the band Cage the Elephant got their name when a mentally disturbed man approached the lead singer, hugged him, and kept repeating "you have to cage the elephant" [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

08 May 2024 07:00

TIL Ben Stiller developed the premise for Tropic Thunder while shooting Empire of the Sun. He wanted to make a film based on the actors he knew who became "self-important" & appeared to believe they had been part of a real military unit after taking part in boot camps to prepare for war film roles. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

08 May 2024 05:00

TIL a finance worker at a multinational firm was tricked into paying out $25 million to fraudsters using deepfake technology to pose as the company's CFO in a video conference call that included several other members of staff, all of whom were in fact deepfake recreations. Everyone he saw was fake. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

08 May 2024 02:00

TIL the Las Vegas Sphere's theater screen required such high resolution that they made the largest commercially available sensor, a 316 megapixel camera capable of 18k resolution. The image on the screen is 16K driven by 25 synchronized 4K video servers, taking up to 60GB per second of footage. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

08 May 2024 00:00

TIL Lawrence Joseph Bader, an Ohio man who vanished in 1957 after a boating trip on Lake Erie. Eight years later, he was found in Omaha, Nebraska, living as John "Fritz" Johnson, a radio and TV personality with no memory of his past life. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

07 May 2024 23:01

TIL of the Apollo 15 postal covers scandal. The astronauts of Apollo 15 carried about 400 unauthorized postal covers into space and to the Moon's surface on the Lunar Module Falcon. All three were paid/bribed $7k each by stamp dealers, got busted, and never flew in space again. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

07 May 2024 18:00

TIL that in 2009, two puppeteers placed $10,000 in coins in a chest, hid it in New York, and posted the clues on YouTube. Three years later, after no one found it, they dug up the treasure and donated it to people affected by Hurricane Sandy in 2012 [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

07 May 2024 16:00

TIL in 1976 groundskeeper Richard Arndt caught Hank Aaron's 755th home run ball & tried to return it to Aaron but was told he's unavailable. The next day the Brewers fired Arndt for stealing team property (the ball) & deducted $5 from his final paycheck. In 1999, he sold it at auction for $625,000. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

07 May 2024 15:00

TIL a very valuable painting called "Christ Mocked" was found to have been just hanging in an elderly woman's kitchen for years. She had been thinking of throwing it out, but her family called in an appraiser. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

07 May 2024 12:00

TIL the world's first transplanted penis was reversed two weeks later because the recipient and his wife had such a "severe psychological problem" with it. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

07 May 2024 09:00

TIL That while some citric acid is derived from lemon juice, the majority of citric acid commercially sold is extracted from a black mold called Aspergillus niger, which produces citric acid after it feeds on sugar [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

07 May 2024 07:01

TIL In 2022, a 30-year old was swept by the sea (along with a friend who was never found) while swimming in Halkidiki, Greece. He was rescued 20 hours later, holding on to a tiny football ball, 26km away from the beach they were swept from [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

08 May 2024 16:01

TIL Leonhard Euler wrote some papers on music theory. However, these papers were considered “too mathematical for musicians and too musical for mathematicians.” [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

08 May 2024 15:00

TIL that on warning of a likely missile launch against the USA, the Pentagon and Strategic Command war rooms, have one minute to brief the president, who then has roughly only six minutes to decide whether and how to respond. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

08 May 2024 09:00

TIL Disney cofounder Roy Disney spent time with his grandchildren every week at Disneyland. Roy greeted each employee by name and picked up garbage he saw on the ground to teach them "Nobody is too good to pick up trash” [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

08 May 2024 07:00

TIL The Vulture and the Little Girl photo by Kevin Carter actually depicts a little boy, who survived the Sudanese famine and died in 2007. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

08 May 2024 07:00

Today I learned that even daily recommended quantities of vitamin C are not enough to recover from a scurvy type of disease within a 6 month timeframe [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

08 May 2024 05:00

TIL that in addition to being the youngest EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony) winner, fastest to achieve EGOT, and only EGOT winner twice over, songwriter Robert Lopez (who wrote music for such works as Disney's Frozen) broke the previous record of fastest to achieve EGOT previously held by...himself. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

08 May 2024 01:00

TIL: Just last year in 2023 , the Great Kentucky Hoard was found, adding proof to the age old claims of lost Civil War gold caches. It consisted of verified 800 Civil War coins most of them gold. The person who discovered it hid his identity and where exactly he unearthed them. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

07 May 2024 23:01

TIL Lone star ticks can give you an indefinite allergy to red meat if they bite you. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

07 May 2024 20:00

TIL Paul Thomas Anderson contacted Warren Beatty about playing Jack Horner, a veteran adult film director, in his movie Boogie Nights. After 2 weeks of discussion, Anderson realized the 60-yr-old wanted to play 18-yr-old adult film star Dirk Diggler. When asked if he'd play Horner, Beatty declined. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

07 May 2024 16:00

TIL 29 bars in NJ were caught serving things like rubbing alcohol + food coloring as scotch and dirty water as liquor [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

07 May 2024 16:00

TIL, in his suicide note, mass shooter Charles Whitman requested his body be autopsied because he felt something was wrong with him. The autopsy discovered that Whitman had a pecan-sized tumor pressing against his amygdala, a brain structure that regulates fear and aggression. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

07 May 2024 15:00

TIL about a fancy apartment in Paris that was abandoned in 1942. It became a time capsule that remained untouched until 2010. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

07 May 2024 10:00

TIL the oldest confirmed dildo is ~28,000 years old, made of siltstone, has etched rings around the top, and is highly polished from use… [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

07 May 2024 07:01

TIL that Chang and Eng Bunker, not only were the original "Siamese twins," but after traveling the world and making a pretty penny from exhibiting themselves, settled in North Carolina, became U.S. citizens, bought/owned slaves, and married two sisters whom they produced 21 children with. [Source]

Today I Learned 🎓

07 May 2024 05:01

TIL about "terra preta" ("black soil"), a very dark and fertile regenerating soil present in the Amazon Basin. [Source]