"TIL that dogs and cats have special taste buds geared specifically for water"
"TIL that The British Pound is the oldest currency in the world, it has been used for over 1,200 years and dated back to Anglo-Saxon era. Back then it equivalent to 1 pound of silver. One pound back then could buy you 15 cows"
"TIL that Nike created a pair of shoes that were so advanced, they were banned from the Olympics because they were considered as technological doping.The Alphaflys, or “the shoe that broke running”, as sports scientist Dr Ross Tuckercalled them, contain tech designed to deliver greater energy return"
"TIL that the religious group known as the Shakers are completely celibate and cannot have children, so they can only gain new members by converting outsiders. As a result, there were only two people in the last existing Shaker community as of 2020, although they gained a single new member in 2021"
"TIL that In 2018, Pope Francis married two flight attendants in an impromptu mid-air wedding on a plane during a trip to Chile. The couple had gotten married in a civil ceremony in 2010 but weren't able to follow it up with a church service because of the earthquake in Chile that year"
"TIL - According to a 2009 Sports Illustrated article, 60 percent of former NBA players are broke within five years of retirement. By the time they have been retired for two years, 78% of former NFL players have gone bankrupt or are under financial stress"
"TIL Mount Thor in Canada has the world's longest vertical drop. If you fell off it, you would fall for over a kilometer before you hit anything"
"TIL: In the 25 years since Ron Goldman’s family won a $33,500,000 civil judgement against OJ Simpson for wrongful death, he has only paid the family about $133,000"
"TIL when a pilot ejects from their plane, the ejection seat manufacturer gives them a tie. The Ejection Tie Club is confined solely to those who have emergency ejected from an aircraft using a Martin-Baker ejection seat. There are over 6,000 members"
"TIL that humans have the highest daytime visual acuity of any mammal, and among the highest of any animal (some birds of prey have much better). However, we have relatively poor night vision"
"TIL in 2006, a mother and son were convicted of trying to extort money from Cracker Barrel by claiming they found a dead mouse in her soup. Charges were filed after a necropsy showed the mouse had no soup in its lungs and had not been cooked, signs that it was dropped into the soup after its death"
"TIL: The World's Littlest Skyscraper in Wichita Falls was built in 1919. Remote investors were swindled by intentionally not indicating the units on the planned blueprints were in inches, not feet"
"TIL in 2009 an American tourist was almost left behind by his transcontinental Australian train. He clung to the outside for two hours and 124 miles in only a t-shirt and jeans while the temperature dropped below freezing"
"TIL that a trio of drunken boys decided to sail out to sea looking for a girl they saw at a sports competition event. They ended up sailing for more than seven weeks and drifted 1300 km off course before being rescued by a tuna boat. They all survived by drinking beer, eating coconuts and a bird"
"TIL that in 2017 a sailor was stranded and alone on a cargo ship near the Suez Canal for almost 4 years. Since the owner was having financial difficulties and the captain had gone ashore, the local court declared the sailor the legal guardian"
"TIL the average Mexican is genetically 50% indigenous with evidence of native ancestry being significantly higher on the X chromosome"
"TIL Microsoft held a mock funeral for iPhone because they thought the windows phone 7 was going to smash apple in sales"
"TIL only 5% of residential homes in the UK are thought to have air conditioning and many buildings are designed in a way to keep heat in"
"TIL coding RollerCoaster Tycoon in the late 1990s required significant optimization of PC power and memory constraints at the time. Per designer Chris Sawyer, letting guests drown was simply easier than programming the alternative of allowing them to swim to shore"
"TIL that after the Portuguese dictator Salazar went into coma, he was dismissed as Prime Minister. When he emerged from it and recovered lucidity, no one wanted to tell him he had been removed from power, instead he was allowed to "rule" in privacy until his death 2 years later"
"TIL that official temperatures used in weather apps are taken in shade, not under sunlight"
"TIL in the movie Arachnophobia, the largest spider was a bird-eating spider they named Big Bob, after Robert Zemekis. Big Bob was adopted by a crew member named Jamie Hyneman, who went on to host Mythbusters. The little ones were controlled using a hairdryer and lemon pledge spray"
"TIL that a single engineer in the control room of NASA prevented the astronauts of Apollo 12 from aborting the mission seconds after launch. "Set SCE to AUX", said John Aaron which saved the entire mission"
"TIL Gloria Williams, who pleaded guilty to posing as a hospital employee and abducting Kamiyah Mobley from her mother's arms in the maternity ward, was sentenced to 18 years, which was the length of time Mobley was separated from her birth family"
"TIL the reason why Wine Coolers dropped in popularity in the USA after the 80s was because in 1991, the US excise tax on wine was raised from $0.17 per gallon to a $1.07, making it uneconomical for Wine Cooler makers to produce at a palatable price for buyers"
"TIL male goats urinate on their heads to smell more attractive to females"
"TIL that a robot fish invented to mimic the natural predator of the 'mosquitofish' was so effective that it altered their behaviour, physiology and fertility, effectively "scaring them to death""
"TIL that production on "No Country For Old Men" was shut down for a day due to a large black cloud of smoke drifting into view. The smoke was coming from a pyrotechnics test on the set of Paul Thomas Anderson's "There Will Be Blood", which was simultaneously filming in the same town of Marfa, TX"
• Don't insult other visitors. Offensive comments will be deleted without warning.
• Comments are accepted in English only.
• No swearing words in comments, otherwise such comments will be censored.
• Your nickname and avatar are randomly selected. If you don't post comments for 7 days, they both are reset.
• To choose another avatar, click the ‘Random avatar’ link.
As for the "stupid" Venetians, perhaps back in 1687 they considered it more important to drive the Muslims out of Greece than protect Athena's temple.
he never saw it coming