TIL about the Gell-Mann amnesia effect; when experts find articles published within their field to be full of errors, but trust articles about other fields in the same publication (en.m.wikipedia.org)
TIL the Allies fielded thousands of tanks by the end of World War I, a major technological breakthrough. The Germans deployed just 18. (en.wikipedia.org)
TIL the mangaka Naoko Takeuchi (Sailor Moon) is married to another famous manga author Yoshihiro Togashi (Hunter x Hunter and Yu Yu Hakusho) (en.wikipedia.org)
TIL George Clooney was asked to play himself in a sketch for the Movie 43 (the gag was that Clooney is bad at picking up women), and Clooney replied "No fucking way." (en.wikipedia.org)
TIL that in the early days of Fed-Ex, there was one time the company couldn't afford the fuel bill for their planes, so the founder took the company's last $5,000 and went to Las Vegas and won $27,000 (en.wikipedia.org)
TIL the Japanese words 青 (ao) and 青い (aoi) can refer to either blue or green depending on the situation. (en.wikipedia.org)
TIL Burger King sold a burger with so much food coloring that it turned people's poop bright green (www.usatoday.com)
TIL that in 2020, Burger King ran an advertising campaign featuring a picture of a moldy Whopper, to prove that their burgers are made without preservatives. This unconventional advertising method wor (www.cnbc.com)
TIL that in 2020, Burger King ran an advertising campaign featuring a picture of a moldy Whopper, to prove that their burgers are made without preservatives. This unconventional advertising method worked, increasing sales by 14% (according to multiple sources.)
TIL about professional audience plants called Claquers (en.wikipedia.org)
TIL that VP Kamala Harris' Father Was a 'Marxist Economist'. (www.snopes.com)
TIL: The Black Panthers were key supporters of the Disability rights protests which eventually led to the passage of the Americans with Disabilities act
From Wikipedia...
TIL: The largest extant feline is the Liger, hybrid of a male Lion and female Tiger (en.wikipedia.org)
TIL: Contrary to popular conception, non-monetary societies did not mainly rely on barter as a means of trade, but relied on gift economics and sometimes debt.
From wikipedia:...
TIL that his museum says that "Roald Dahl’s racism is undeniable and indelible" (sh.itjust.works)
This is the first I’ve heard of it, but here’s one of his infamous quotes:...
TIL the US Department of Defense maintained their own Linux LiveCD distro until 2021 (en.m.wikipedia.org)
TIL Michael Richards (Kramer) was drafted into the US army and stationed in West Germany. He used the GI Bill to get a drama degree.
Richards graduated from Thousand Oaks High School. In 1968, he appeared as a contestant on The Dating Game, but was not chosen for the date. He was drafted into the United States Army in 1970. He trained as a medic and was stationed in West Germany where he was a member of a theatrical group called The Training Road Show.[12] He...
TIL kobolds in Japan are dog-people because of a mistranslation in a copy of AD&D in the 80s
I was reading about Dungeon Meshi and Kuro, the “kobold”....
TIL the USA has fidget gun toys (sh.itjust.works)
No joke...
TIL psychedelics supposedly work by desynchronizing the brain (www.nature.com)
TIL that Joe Biden is from Scranton, PA (sh.itjust.works)
Learned something new today while listening to a podcast about US politics.
TIL computers can sometimes grow crystals (upload.wikimedia.org)
Tin in solder or some other meals can form spiky crystals when under stress. These whiskers can form short circuits if not properly insulated or not alloyed with other metals....
TIL That the entirety of Wikipedia is only ~100Gb and you can download it for offline use
In light of the recent Crowdstrike crash revealing how weak points in IT infrastructure can have wide ranging effects, I figured this might be an interesting one....
TIL “The Dark Side of the Moon”’s cover is apparently public domain if you slapped the letters “CGI” on it (commons.wikimedia.org) Spanish
Some government employee made the “new logo” in the 90s for NCSA software (the Common Gateway Interface), and government work is public domain....
TIL that there is a Refugee Team in the Olympics (olympics.com)
TIL the term "Mad as a Hatter" likely came from hat makers using mercury and the resulting mercury poisoning. (en.wikipedia.org)
Mercury poisoning of hat-makers – In 18th and 19th century England, mercury was used in the production of felt, which was commonly used in the hat-making trade at the time. Long-term use of mercury products often resulted in mercury poisoning-induced erethism among hat-makers.[1][2] In the late 19th-century United States, a...
