Today I Learned (TIL)

The original post: /r/todayilearned by /u/avaxnomax on 2025-02-16 09:14:59.

The original post: /r/todayilearned by /u/CherryBlushFizz on 2025-02-16 07:06:07.

Original Title: TIL that in 1920, French President Paul Deschanel fell from a moving train at night while wearing pajamas. Disoriented, he approached a railway signalman, claiming to be the president. The signalman, doubting his sanity, reportedly replied, "And I'm Napoleon Bonaparte."

The original post: /r/todayilearned by /u/Sebastianlim on 2025-02-16 06:06:34.

Original Title: TIL about Patricia Meehan, a woman who was involved in a car crash on Montana Highway 200. After the crash, she was observed acting strangely and wandered off, disappearing into the night. Despite over 5,000 supposed sightings of her, she has never been located.

The original post: /r/todayilearned by /u/TriviaDuchess on 2025-02-16 04:42:33.

Original Title: TIL that King Ferdinand VII of Spain was forced to abdicate in 1808 and was replaced by Napoleon’s brother. He lived in luxury in France until Spain ousted the French, restoring him to the throne—only for him to betray the Spanish people who fought to bring him back.

The original post: /r/todayilearned by /u/JamesepicYT on 2025-02-16 04:37:18.

The original post: /r/todayilearned by /u/JamesepicYT on 2025-02-16 04:32:07.

Original Title: TIL Thomas Jefferson initially thought black people were mentally inferior, but when black mathematician Benjamin Bannecker showed Jefferson his almanac with astronomical calculations, Jefferson praised Bannecker, treating him as an equal

The original post: /r/todayilearned by /u/GetYerHandOffMyPen15 on 2025-02-16 03:31:10.

Original Title: TIL that phosphorus was the first new element to be discovered since ancient times. In 1669, a German alchemist tried boiling and condensing urine in order to make the fabled philosopher’s stone. Instead, he discovered a substance that glowed in the dark and named it “phosphorus mirabilis.”

The original post: /r/todayilearned by /u/ViceCatsFan on 2025-02-16 03:30:28.

Original Title: TIL about Nicholas Longworth, who when another member of Congress touched his bald head and said, "Nice and smooth. Feels just like my wife's bottom." Longworth felt his own head and said: "Yes, so it does."

The original post: /r/todayilearned by /u/PoodleBirds on 2025-02-16 02:53:04.

The original post: /r/todayilearned by /u/Tracker-man on 2025-02-16 02:30:09.

The original post: /r/todayilearned by /u/CaravelClerihew on 2025-02-16 02:29:55.

Original Title: TIL about the Shitbox Rally, an Australian long distance motoring event that raises money for cancer research. Each car in the rally has to cost less than $950 USD and can't be AWD/4WD. The Rally has raised almost $30 million USD so far.

The original post: /r/todayilearned by /u/ienjoylanguages on 2025-02-16 02:29:17.

Original Title: TIL there are cases in which women have eaten their own placentas after childbirth because they believed it helped with depression, post delivery bleeding, and improved mood; there is no evidence it does any of these things.

The original post: /r/todayilearned by /u/spmahn on 2025-02-16 02:27:48.

The original post: /r/todayilearned by /u/nitestocker372 on 2025-02-16 02:27:13.

The original post: /r/todayilearned by /u/theotherbogart on 2025-02-16 02:20:24.

Original Title: TIL: In 1899, "hot mess" first appeared in print to describe something in extreme confusion or disorder. Complaining that people believed everything they read in newspapers, the Journal of the International Association of Machinists declared, "the public is a hot mess."

The original post: /r/todayilearned by /u/Wonderin_Wanderer on 2025-02-16 02:13:24.

Original Title: TIL there is a latin concept "anima mundi" that translates to "world soul", or "soul of the world". Similar to the idea of the human body having a soul, the world also has a soul that allows for an intrinsic connection between all living beings.

The original post: /r/todayilearned by /u/kenistod on 2025-02-16 01:28:29.

Original Title: TIL in 1962 Brendon Grimshaw bought Moyenne Island in Seychelles for £8k. He planted 16k trees on the island and bred giant Aldabra tortoises. He was the sole inhabitant of the island until his death in 2012. Instead of selling it for $50m, it was declared a national park is the world's smallest.

The original post: /r/todayilearned by /u/TriviaDuchess on 2025-02-16 01:00:10.

Original Title: TIL that King Louis IX was captured and imprisoned for six weeks in Egypt in 1250 during the Seventh Crusade. He was ransomed for the equivalent of one-third of France’s GDP, while nearly all of his army was massacred. 20 years later, he died in Tunisia while on another crusade.

The original post: /r/todayilearned by /u/JannTosh50 on 2025-02-15 23:41:39.

The original post: /r/todayilearned by /u/tyrion2024 on 2025-02-15 23:34:52.

Original Title: TIL after doctors removed a mass from a 47-yr-old man's lung that they believed was a malignant tumor, they discovered it was a Playmobil toy traffic cone that he had swallowed on his 7th birthday in 1974. His airway was able to adapt, which is most likely why he didn't show symptoms until he was 40

The original post: /r/todayilearned by /u/Double-decker_trams on 2025-02-15 23:14:19.

Original Title: TIL there's almost twice as many January-born professional football (soccer) players as there are December-born players. And in the U17's European championships squads there's over four times as many players born between January and March as between October and December.

The original post: /r/todayilearned by /u/TriviaDuchess on 2025-02-15 22:34:59.

Original Title: TIL that Gonzaga University is named in honor of Saint Aloysius Gonzaga, a 23-year-old Italian Jesuit seminarian who died while attending to the sick who had been forced out of their homes and onto the streets during a plague epidemic in Rome in 1591.

The original post: /r/todayilearned by /u/CatPooedInMyShoe on 2025-02-15 22:17:44.

Original Title: TIL the Cretaceous-era turtle Kallokibotion bajazidi’s scientific name literally means “beautiful box of Bajazid” and that Franz Nopcsa von Felső-Szilvás, the paleontologist who named the species, named it that because the shape of the turtle’s shell reminded him of his lover Bajazid Doda’s butt.

The original post: /r/todayilearned by /u/fearlessphosgene on 2025-02-15 22:07:05.

The original post: /r/todayilearned by /u/Double-decker_trams on 2025-02-15 21:19:45.