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- January 2018 (15)
- 04: ELI5: What causes Rhotacism? (The inability to pronounce the letter “r”) (1)
- 04: TIL that after the courts found insufficient proof against his daughter’s killer, a father hired 2 guys to kidnap the man and transport him to France. The man was found “tied up and dumped near a French courthouse.” He received 15 years in prison. Dad got a 1-year suspended sentence for kidnapping. (0)
- 04: IWTL how to comfort sad people (0)
- 04: YSK that encrypted emails are just as easy as normal ones. The rise of encryption will stop mass surveillance. (0)
- 04: What is the point in writing ‘2k17’ when you could just write ‘2017’ in the same space and the same amount of characters. (0)
- 04: ELI5: As Turtles and Tortoises grow older how do their shells grow? (0)
- 04: TIL Teddy Roosevelt’s Son Died Flying for the US During WWI. When His Body Was Discovered Behind Enemy Lines, the Germans Gave Him A Full Military Burial With Honors. (0)
- 04: ELI5: What is this major security flaw in the microprocessors inside nearly all of the world’s computers? (0)
- 04: TIL vocal jazz legend Ella Fitzgerald was born with perfect pitch so precise that the band musicians she worked with would tune their instruments to her voice. (0)
- 02: TIL flow is the mental state in which a person is completely absorbed in an activity, resulting in a loss of their sense of space and time. (0)
- 02: ELI5: How do icy-hot gels work? (0)
- 02: TIL if you publish a book in Norway, the government will buy 1000 copies (1,500 if a children’s book) and distribute them to libraries throughout the country. (0)
- 02: IWTL how to talk to my family (0)
- 02: YSK: In case you ever lose your Android phone, there is an applet which turns its ringer up to 100% if you text it (0)
- 02: What is underneath all the sand in the Sahara Desert? (0)
- December 2017 (357)
- 31: I want to learn how to be bilingual and eventually multilingual. (0)
- 31: YSK If you’re bitten by a tick, keep the tick in a bag in your freezer. If you ever suspect that you have the symptoms of lyme disease, you can get the tick tested and get antibiotics. Early treatment does cure the otherwise incurable disease. (0)
- 31: ELI5: How does carbonation aid with an upset stomach? (0)
- 31: TIL 1 in 5 organ donations comes from the victim of a vehicular accident, and self-driving cars may end up exacerbating the shortage. (0)
- 31: ELI5: What is falsetto, and how is it different from normal singing? (0)
- 31: IWTL how to shut off my mind at night (0)
- 31: TIL scientists have successfully created a process to genetically modify pigs to produce human-transplantable organs. The method edits the genetics of pig DNA to prevent our bodies from rejecting their organs. It would end transplant lists overnight. Human trials are starting. (0)
- 31: What do insanely wealthy people buy, that ordinary people know nothing about? (0)
- 31: What happens to my contact lenses if I were suddenly to go into a coma for an extended period of time? Is there someone whose job it is to remove them? (0)
- 31: YSK that if your phone mysteriously stops working, don’t try to get into your bank account. (0)
- 27: YSK: Taking burst photos with your camera greatly improves the chances of capturing the best shot. (0)
- 27: YSK that Spotify quietly increased the price of Student Premium + Hulu (0)
- 27: YSK Older relatives, who you haven’t seen since last holiday season, who make cooking blunders may be showing signs of dementia (0)
- 27: YSK: Secret check out counter at Walmart (0)
- 27: YSK: You can charge USB devices even when your laptop is in sleep mode (0)
- 27: YSK that the iPhone has medical information accessible by holding the lock button (or lock+volume down for iPhone X) which contains the identity of the phone owner, medications they take, known conditions, allergies, and organ donor information (0)
- 27: YSK that prior to 1582 Christmas was celebrated today… the day of the winter solstice. (0)
- 27: YSK: There is a website that will play you only Spotify songs that no one has ever played before. (0)
- 27: YSK: The USPS, UPS, and FedEx all have free services that will let you get automatic notifications for packages being delivered to your home (0)
- 27: YSK Truepeoplesearch.com is scary and will often list children’s true address. (0)
- 27: YSK: How to use shipping boxes to donate used household items for free via mail. (0)
- 27: YSK: Men, if you are ever visiting a hospital and need to poop, go to the OB/GYN offices. Their men’s rooms are rarely used and usually clean and quiet (0)
- 27: YSK: February 22, 2022 (02/22/2022) falls on a Tuesday. Twosday. (0)
- 27: YSK that some car insurances also offer coverage for rental cars. Check with your insurance and rental car company before you book extra insurance. (0)
- 27: YSK: There are Christmas scams today. Do not click any links in any texts or emails about an alleged gift from an unknown source. (0)
- 27: YSK: If you’re ever at a theme park, check if there’s a single riders line. It’s typically quicker than queuing, but your party will be split up. (0)
- 27: YSK that if hospital staff find you wandering around without good reason they will call security. (0)
- 27: ELI5: If there is no cellphone signal, how does the “emergency calls only” mode works? (0)
- 27: TIL that instead of selling 6 shares for 610,000 yen, a trader sold 610,000 shares for 6 yen, which resulted in a $100M loss for his company (0)
- 27: ELI5: What exactly makes cooked food more nutritious? (0)
- 26: YSK: You can make your iPhone screen even darker than the minimum brightness by turning on Zoom with Low Light filter. (0)
- 26: YSK: If you cant get a reservation at Beast’s Castle at Disney World, Guest Services may be able to use a little magic. (0)
- 26: YSK: If your laptop has a USB port with a lightning symbol next to it , you can use it to charge your phone or accessories without switching the laptop on . (0)
- 26: YSK in the US Hitting the lock button on an iPhone 5 times in succession will open an SOS option which allows you to quickly and discreetly place a call to 911 (0)
- 26: YSK: If you do not have a bank account with Bank of America (BOA), you cannot deposit cash into a BOA account holder’s account. They will only accept money orders if you do not have an account. (0)
- 26: IWTL how to approach insta crush without being creepy (0)
- 26: IWTL How not to be depressed at this time of year (0)
- 26: IWTL How to cut out snacking throughout the day (0)
- 26: IWTL how to draw (0)
- 26: I just realized that I always use others as a medium for my own happiness. This has really affected my relationships and family. How do I find long-lasting happiness within myself? (0)
- 26: IWTL: How to perform at my best mentally. (0)
- 26: IWTL How to use watercolors (0)
- 26: IWTL how to live out of my car (0)
- 26: IWTL about Buddhism (0)
- 26: I want to learn how to like myself (0)
- 26: IWTL all the countries of the world! (0)
- 26: IWTL How to stop hyper-focusing on specific tasks, and become more well-rounded and educated about the world (0)
- 26: How do researchers research effectively? (0)
- 26: IWTL how to do pixel art and/or design on photoshop (0)
- 26: IWTL the fastest way to learn 500 Chinese characters for conversational Chinese (0)
- 26: IWTL How To Become An Actor (0)
- 26: IWTL to play the piano (0)
- 26: IWTL How I would go about making a meal plan for myself (0)
- 26: IWTL to freestyle rap (0)
- 26: What is this painting and where do I buy it? (0)
- 26: IWTL to be funny and keep conversations going (0)
- 26: IWLT How to get a lean and strong body in 2 years (0)
- 26: ELI5: Has pregnancies (in humans) always taken 9 months? Is there any possibility that the development time could increase or decrease in the future? (0)
- 26: ELI5: Why is eating too much after a long period of starvation dangerous? (0)
- 26: ELI5: how do drug purity tests work when testing drugs like cocaine and mdma? (0)
- 26: TIL four-legged animals like horses and dogs don’t have backwards knees. Those joints are actually their ankles, which bend in the same direction as our ankles do. (0)
- 26: I want to learn gymnastics (0)
- 26: IWTL as much as possible about the US healthcare market and health insurance industry (0)
- 26: IWTL How to genuinely smile for a photo (0)
- 26: IWTL how to properly play the guitar w/theory (0)
- 26: IWTL How to grow intellectually (0)
- 26: IWTL how to put music over the videos and how to edit, combine videos (0)
- 26: IWTL How to write convincing argumentative essays (0)
- 26: IWTL How to Read Actively (0)
- 26: IWTL how to make a resume (0)
- 26: IWTL about making music (0)
- 26: IWTL how to sing decently (0)
- 26: IWTL how to cheer a miserable service industry worker up as a customer (0)
- 26: IWTL how to get back into a hobby I gave up like two decades ago. Drawing/illustrations (0)
- 26: IWTL about racism (0)
- 26: I want to learn about relationships (0)
- 26: YSK: USBs have two sides: a solid and a hollow side. The great majority of USBs go in with the hollow side facing you. (0)
- 26: YSK: If the Apple store tells you your motherboard needs to be fully replaced and is out of warranty, don’t spend $100s. Take it to a qualified, reputable computer repair shop. You can pay a fraction to get the same result. (0)
- 26: YSK your iPhone has an “Emergency SOS” setting that allows you to call emergency services by clicking the lock button 5 times in a row. You can enable or disable an alarm that plays before calling. (0)
- 26: YSK: If you are having a problem with a state or federal agency, your state/federal representatives have staff who a specifically there to help you, and they have special channels to those agencies. (0)
- 26: YSK that any credit fraud alerts setup after the Equifax breach will be expiring in the next few weeks (0)
- 26: YSK: Github offers a very large Student Developer package, many cloud-hosts, software/web/app dev tools, and more at your disposal if you’re a student/teacher. (13+ y/o) (0)
- 26: YSK many external WD hard drives integrate the USB-to-SATA logic onto the hard drive instead of using a separate board. If that circuit fails, extracting the data will cost as much as a used car, rather than $20 for a new enclosure that naturally comes with a standard USB-to-SATA bridge. (0)
- 26: YSK that Holland is not the name for the country, but for two provinces in the Netherlands. (0)
- 26: YSK that if men don’t register for the US military draft they can be denied a Driver’s License in some states, like Virginia, and will be denied federal student loans and grants, federal job training money, and certain government jobs. (0)
- 26: IWTL how to help a friend who is suffering from depression. (0)
- 26: I want to learn how to be more interested in others and talk about myself less. (0)
- 26: YSK About Windows Disk Cleanup. It can free up quite a bit of disk space used up by recent Windows Update leftovers, and many other things. (0)
- 26: YSK About An Effective Way to Get Rid of Unpleasant Memories and Feelings (0)
- 26: YSK that you can email most cell phone numbers and it sends as a text (0)
- 26: YSK- About GoodRX a website to visit for MASSIVE discounts on prescriptions from almost any pharmacy. Very important for people with no insurance. (0)
- 26: Why does the human body make being embarrassed even more embarrassing by making our faces and/or ears red? (0)
- 26: Why don’t all students get tested *before* starting a class, to see if they need it? (0)
- 26: Anyone ever see their parents get old and kind of get scared or sad? (0)
- 26: Why don’t innocent people in court call upon Google/Apple/Microsoft to provide proof of their alibi with the data they collect? (0)
- 26: What’s the time commitment like in organized crime, in terms of hours per week? (0)
- 26: Why do movie theaters have front rows? (0)
- 26: This is my first winter in the northern US – what do I need to do? (0)
- 26: In action movies someone will grab somebody’s head and hit it with their own head to knock them out. Is that actually possible in real life? How does it not do an equal amount of damage to both people? (0)
- 26: “This house has been winterized. DO NOT TURN ON WATER”. Well, why not? What would happen? (0)
- 26: Why are there no/few female sushi chefs? (0)
- 26: ELI5:How does the human ear discern between a quiet noise and a distant noise? (0)
- 26: ELI5: Why do pipes in the shower sing when certain temperatures of water goes through them? (0)
- 26: ELI5: Why are dams, like Hoover Dam, built in arc shape instead of straight line? (0)
- 26: ELI5:Can You Protect Electronics From EMPs/solar flares? If So How? (0)
- 26: ELI5: how can a layer of metamorphic rocks be on top of a layer of sedimentary rocks? Shouldn’t the deepest layer have higher pressure and temperature? (0)
- 26: ELI5: If identical twins were to be given a paternity test (if one were suspected of being a child’s father), given they have identical DNA, is there a medical test that could determine which twin is the father? (0)
- 26: ELI5: How does bowing work in Japanese culture. I’ve heard there are so many subtleties to bowing that a Westerner should never attempt it. Is this true? What are some of these subtleties? (0)
- 26: ELI5: Why are chickens more likely to be contaminated with salmonella and not other animals (0)
- 26: ELI5: Why do you sometimes wake up more tired with more sleep, and more energetic with less sleep? (0)
- 26: ELI5: Why do balloons make such a loud noise when they pop? (0)
- 26: ELI5: Why are there such virus inducing ads on nearly every site? And who lets them stay there? (0)
- 26: ELI5: How does chapstick work? (0)
- 26: ELI5 why canned food last much longer than other packed food? (0)
- 26: ELI5: How did drinking beer help out during the time of the bubonic plague pandemics? (0)
- 26: ELIF What is the difference between time signatures that have the same ratio? (0)
- 26: ELI5: If the universe is expanding in all directions, does that mean that the universe is shaped like a sphere? (0)
- 26: ELI5: How does charcoal clean your face? (0)
- 26: ELI5 Do scientists have any theories about whether space has edges? (0)
- 26: ELI5: Why is finding “patient zero” in an epidemic so important? (0)
- 26: ELI5: How does sleep restore the body’s energy? (0)
- 26: ELI5: Why does garlic smell good in food but bad in breath? (0)
- 26: ELI5: What does the tax bill that was passed today mean? How will it affect Americans in each tax bracket? (0)
- 26: ELI5: NASA Engineers just communicated with Voyager 1 which is 21 BILLION kilometers away (and out of our solar system) and it communicated back. How is this possible? (0)
- 26: ELI5: Why are cheap glasses with a positive prescription (ie reading glasses) readily available, but negative prescriptions need to be custom ordered at a much higher cost? (0)
- 26: ELI5: How can something exceed 2 Billion Kelvin? (0)
- 26: ELI5: Where does water go during low-tide? (0)
- 26: ELI5: What exactly is dust? Where does it come from and how the heck does it get everywhere regardless of what measures you take (e.g. covering things in plastic)? (0)
- 26: ELI5: What exactly does radiation poisoning do to our bodies, and how does medicine cure it? (0)
- 26: ELI5: Why are 9mm bullets less dangerous than 7.62 or even 5.56 ones? Shouldn’t they deal more damage with bigger size? (0)
- 26: ELI5: When you remove a tumor, does it leave a gap in the organ/tissue it was removed from? (0)
- 26: ELI5: How does the U.S. government read the FCC comments? (0)
- 26: ELI5: How does “activated charcoal” work and why has it become so wildly popular in beauty/cosmetic products? (0)
- 26: ELI5: If the common cold tends to be a different virus each time (hence why you can’t necessarily prevent it), why do you have nearly the same symptoms each time? (0)
- 26: ELI5: What exactly is “American Exceptionalism”? (0)
- 26: ELIF: How do goats have such good balance/fearlessness for jumping on precarious ledges? (0)
- 26: ELI5: If Dragons never existed, what brought about so much lore in so many different places across Eurasia? (0)
- 26: ELI5: How does a text through iMessage reach another’s phone halfway across the world in seconds? (0)
- 26: ELIF: How do lumens work when measuring brightness of flashlights? Ie. How do cheap flashlights have outputs of like 2000 lumens? (0)
- 26: ELI5: What exactly is a watershed and how does it work? For instance, we live in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed area. I have attempted to read on the subject, and consider myself a smart gal, but this just confuses me all day. (0)
- 26: ELI5: Why do tea bags say ‘Do Not Microwave’? (0)
- 26: ELI5: When you’re unconscious due to trauma, do you sleep and rest? Or is it tiring? (0)
- 26: ELI5: How do parasites, like tapeworms, manage to survive the gastric juices of the stomach and get to the rest of the digestive tract? (0)
- 26: ELI5: Why do cold surfaces sometimes feel wet even though they aren’t? (0)
- 26: ELI5: Why is it that when you hit play on a song during a loud part it will hurt your ears, but when you play the song from the beginning at the same volume, it doesn’t hurt your ears when it gets to the loud part? (0)
- 26: ELI5. How does a garbage bag manage to keep such a wide range of strong and vile stinks contained? (0)
- 26: ELI5: Why has it been so difficult to unseat the big ticket sellers (like Ticketmaster) and start a new ticket system? (0)
- 26: ELI5: Why does cheap alcohol give me a significantly worse hangover than good alcohol? (0)
- 26: ELI5: If influenza is always mutating, why does getting a flu shot help? Doesn’t the shot only prevent attacks from a certain strain? (0)
- 26: ELI5 the difference between 4 Wheel Drive and All Wheel Drive. (0)
- 26: ELI5: If graphene is so great, why isn’t it be used in anything? (0)
- 26: ELI5: How is it possible that when talking on the phone, person A can suddenly lose signal and not hear person B, but Person B can hear person A perfectly well? (0)
- 26: ELI5: Human ancestries – Have males always been generally the more dominant sex? (0)
- 26: ELI5: How do physicists generate a stream of neutrons to fire in their experiments? (0)
- 26: ELI5: Why are there so many types of screws? (Phillips, flathead, Allen, etc.) Why isn’t there a single, standardized type of fastener? (0)
- 26: ELI5: Why can we HEAR our joints crack? How does sound escape the inside of our body? (0)
- 26: ELI5: If all human cells replace themselves every 7 years, why can scars remain on you body your entire life? (0)
- 26: ELI5:. How did climate change become a partisan issue? (0)
- 26: ELI5: How does futures trading work? (0)
- 26: ELI5: Why does the visible light spectrum appear cyclic to the human eye if the spectrum is based on specific linear wavelengths of light? (0)
- 26: ELIF- How does a hot air balloon work? How does the pilot know where they’re going to end up and what happens if it all goes wrong? (0)
- 26: ELI5: Why do many “bad habits” involve chewing on or picking at our bodies (nails, cuticles, lips, etc.)? Why is this so satisfying and hard to stop when it can be bad for our bodies? (0)
- 26: ELI5: Why are some smells stronger than others? E.g. With the same ammount of rotten egg and lavender the rotten egg would be alot more pungent (0)
- 26: ELI5: Why do stars twinkle while planets don’t? (0)
- 26: ELI5: What is AC grounding as opposed to DC grounding? (0)
- 26: ELI5: How does your mind chooses random numbers when someone asks you to do it? (0)
- 26: ELI5: Why is it considered dangerous to reheat rice yet it’s safe to have in ready meals? (0)
- 26: ELI5: Why aren’t noise cancelling headphones as effective in cancelling high pitch sounds as their in cancelling low pitch sounds? (0)
- 26: ELI5: how do engineers make sure wet surface (like during heavy rain) won’t short circuit power transmission tower? (0)
- 26: ELI5 – Why do computer memory systems use 1024 not 1000? (0)
- 26: ElI5: why do experts say to grab vertical ropes when climbing nets? (0)
- 26: ELI5: How can Disney comfortably afford acquiring Fox for 52 billion dollars? (0)
- 26: ELI5: How do neutral countries like Switzerland not get invaded by other countries? (0)
- 26: ELI5: How does a pharmaceutical company come up with new drugs? Do they just try various chemicals on animals until something shows promise, or is there an approach that’s more “targeted” than that? (0)
- 26: ELI5: What causes those pulled neck muscles that happen from doing nothing like yawning or rolling in your sleep? (0)
- 26: ELI5: Why after a good long cry can’t we take a big deep breath without that huh-huh-huh tracheal contraction? (0)
- 26: ELI5: Why do ants and insects get trapped in pen circles? (5)
- 26: ELI5: Where do ISPs get their ‘internet’? (0)
- 26: ELI5: Why does it get harder to fall asleep the more sleep-deprived you are? (0)
- 26: ELI5:How do polaroid pictures work? (0)
- 26: ELI5: Socrates arguments for the immortality of the soul and the cycle of opposites argument (0)
- 26: ELI5: why are keyboards ‘qwerty’ and not alphabetical? (0)
- 26: ELI5: Why are some allergies much more common than others? (0)
- 26: ELI5: How does the brush bring shine to a shoe after polishing and conditioning? (0)
- 26: ELI5: Why do most hard candies just shrink down as you suck on them but peppermints get all porous and full of holes? (0)
- 26: ELI5: What is happening to the body/brain of a person who has taken a dose of LSD? How does LSD cause hallucinations? (0)
- 26: ELI5: Now that it’s back in season, where’s the flu been? (0)
- 26: ELI5: How peeling scotch tape in a vacuum creates radiation. (0)
- 26: ELI5: What is the difference between forward and reverse osmosis? (0)
- 26: ELI5: Why do finger nails grow faster than toe nails? (0)
- 26: ELI5: Why is the Lion so widely used in European Heraldy even though they are mostly found in Africa? (0)
- 26: ELI5: How Dual-Clutch Transmissions and Continuously Variable Transmissions use clutches but do not stall. (0)
- 26: ELI5: Why does blood not stick to human skin like a permanent marker, but will stain things like clothes so bad? (0)
- 26: ELI5: How come certain sodas (such as root beer or grape soda) are almost always caffeine free? (0)
- 26: ELI5: How does Switzerland’s politically neutral stance work? What protects them from external threats? (0)
- 26: ELI5: What makes stainless steel “stainless”? (0)
- 26: ELI5: How do flares stop missiles? (0)
- 26: ELI5: Why do lithium ion batteries degrade over time? (0)
- 26: ELI5: How does sunscreen help protect our skin? (0)
- 26: ELI5: How do Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs) work? (0)
- 26: ELI5: Why aren’t dominant traits always more common than recessive traits? (0)
- 26: ELI5:If the atmosphere is 78% nitrogen why did life develop to use carbon dioxide and oxygen rather than nitrogen? (0)
- 26: ELI5: why a small movement in earth’s rotation makes a large difference in temperature at different times of the day. (0)
- 26: ELI5: How can alcohol withdrawal or detox kill you? (0)
- 26: ELI5: Difference between LED, AMOLED, LCD, and Retina Display? (0)
- 26: TIL that the Mythbusters once tested a combination of common materials that made an extremely powerful explosive. They deleted the tapes and swore to never release the information, then contacted DARPA and warned them about the possibility of misuse from the combination. (0)
- 26: TIL Cindy Stowell had a lifelong dream to be a Jeopardy! contestant. In 2016 she made the show and in spite of the fact that she had Stage 4 cancer during the filming she became a six-time champion. She died shortly before her episodes aired and donated her $103K winnings to cancer organizations. (0)
- 26: TIL that children who are anxiously shy at an early age tend to display distinct patterns of brain activity in social situations at a later age. This manifests in the form of increased distress when anticipating unpredictable social feedback. (0)
- 26: TIL that Adolf Hitler and JRR Tolkien fought at the Battle of the Somme. (0)
- 26: TIL a 2013 BBC study found that 56% of pilots fell asleep while flying, and 29% had woken up to find the co-pilot also asleep. (0)
- 26: TIL one of Saint Nicholas’ most famous gifts was giving a poor man enough money for each of his three daughters to have a proper dowry. This allowed the three girls to avoid a lifetime of prostitution to make ends meet. (0)
- 26: TIL that Mircosoft included Solitaire in their operating systems to “to soothe people intimidated by the operating system” and introduce users to graphic user interfaces and taught them how to use a mouse. (0)
- 24: ELI5: Why do some materials become brittle when they get cold and others do not? (0)
- 24: TIL Homer Simpson’s idea to fill a mine with other cities’ garbage dissuaded a small Canadian town with the exact same idea. (0)
- 24: TIL Thomas Edison would give potential employees a bowl of soup during the interview, if they salted or peppered the soup before tasting it they wouldn’t get the job. This was to test whether the employees had analytical minds and didn’t make assumptions. (0)
- 24: TIL of Silas Soule, an abolitionist who, among other accomplishments, was present at the Sandy Creek Massacre where he refused to order his men to fire. He testified at Congress against his commanding officer and was murdered soon after, likely as a result of his testimony. (0)
- 24: TIL during the Great Famine, the Ottoman Sultan “Abdulmejid I” couldn’t donate more than £1,000, in order not to embarrass Queen Victoria’s £2,000 donation. Wanting to donate more, he sent up to 3 ships filled with wheat and Indian Corn as a “hushed-up” gesture, not wanting to upset the Queen. (0)
- 24: TIL that the 2003 Cat In The Hat movie was so bad that Dr Seuss’s widow specifically said that she wouldn’t allow any more live action adaptations of his work. (0)
- 24: TIL of Timothy Hunter, a DC Comics character created by Neil Gaiman seven years before Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. He wears glasses, lost his mother when he was young, discovered he was destined to be a powerful wizard, and has a pet owl. (0)
- 24: TIL that The Movie “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” title was translated in Israel to “It’s Raining Falafel”. (0)
- 24: TIL While filming Mrs. Doubtfire, Robin Williams would walk through the streets of San Francisco in his full Mrs. Doubtfire makeup and costume, and on one occasion he visited a sex shop to buy a large dildo and other toys. (0)
- 24: TIL Zach Braff beat up a 12 year old for spraying fake paint on his Porsche as a part of a prank on the show Punked. The scene was edited out. (0)
- 24: TIL Chef Boyardee of canned Ravioli fame was awarded both the Gold Star order of excellence from the US War Dept. & the Order of Lenin from Russia for supplying rations to allied troops during WWII (0)
- 24: TIL that the gun on the A10 Warthog fighter plane produces so much recoil that, if you pointed backwards and never ran out of ammo, you could use it to fly. (0)
- 24: TIL that after marathoning Breaking Bad, Anthony Hopkins wrote Bryan Cranston a fan letter, saying (among other things) “Your performance as Walter White was the best acting I have seen – ever.” (0)
- 24: TIL men traveling first class tend to weigh more than those in economy, while for women the reverse is true. (0)
- 24: TIL at the special screening of the James Bond movie ‘Spectre’ at the MI6 building in Vauxhall Cross, the real MI6 staff cheered when the building was blown up in the movie. (0)
- 24: TIL that Planet Earth series has almost no authentic audio. Most of the sounds you hear are audio library effects or tailor-made studio sounds added on the editing table. (0)
- 24: TIL that not all torpedoes are designed to pierce hulls then explode, some detonate below the target ship without making contact. This creates a gas bubble that causes the ship to be thrust out of the water then dropped back into the resulting void, often breaking the vessel in half and sinking it. (0)
- 24: TIL that in the 1930’s a flute player released his pet lyrebird into the wild, which was able to mimic certain phrases of the man’s music. The bird has shared the music with other lyrebirds and the same melodies are still sung by these birds today. (0)
- 24: TIL A man caught a baby that fell out of a window in Detroit in 1930. A year later, the baby fell again and the same man caught the baby again. The baby and the man were unharmed. (1)
- 24: TIL in 1987, in Brazil, a ship carrying 22tons of weed in 3lb cans dumped all of it in the sea after being chased by Brazilian authorities. The cans were carried to the coastline by the tides, and most ended up being found (and used) by locals. This event came to be known as “The Summer of the Cans” (1)
- 24: TIL that Apatheism is the belief that if a god exists, or not, it does not matter, because the effect is the same. Therefore there is no point engaging in worship or even positing the question of existence of the god at all. (0)
- 24: TIL after the band Three Dog Night covered Randy Newman’s song “Mama Told Me Not To Come” and made it a No. 1 hit, Newman called the band’s lead singer Cory Wells and said “I just want to thank you for putting my kids through college” (0)
- 24: TIL of Charles Henry Turner. He was an African American scientist who earned his PhD in 1907. He discovered that insects could distinguish pitch, that cockroaches can learn by trial and error and that honeybees can see color. (0)
- 24: Til that Robin Williams killed himself due to rapidly approaching dimentia, not simply depression. (0)
- 24: TIL that the Mask of Warka, the oldest discovered accurate depiction of a human face (3100 BC), disappeared from the National Museum of Iraq after the 2003 US invasion. A US military mission to recover lost artifacts found the mask, undamaged, buried in a farmer’s backyard. (0)
- 24: TIL Queen Elizabeth II is the only living head of state to have served in World War II (0)
- 24: TIL AT&T only put the * and # buttons on the phone keypad because they had extra space, and they figured maybe someone someday will find some use for them. (0)
- 24: TIL Black Sabbath’s debut album in 1970 began with the sound of rain and a distant church bell. 43 years later, in 2013, their final album ended with the sound of rain and a distant church bell. (0)
- 24: TIL: After Bugs Bunny referred to Elmer Fudd as a “nimrod”, the word began being misinterpreted to mean a dimwitted person. In reality, he was referring to the mighty Biblical hunter of the same name. (0)
- 24: TIL: Treatments invented at St. Jude have helped push the overall childhood cancer survival rate to more than 80%. (0)
- 24: TIL jesters were asked to tell bad news to the king that no one else dared deliver. The best-known example was in 1340 after the French fleet was destroyed by the English. The French King’s jester told him the English sailors “don’t even have the guts to jump into the water like our brave French”. (0)
- 24: TIL scientists discovered a dinosaur tail perfectly preserved in amber. It is full of feathers. (0)
- 24: TIL Willie Nelson used to smoke 2-3 packs of cigarettes a day on top of smoking marijuana. After suffering pneumonia several times, he knew he had to quit one or the other. He chose to quit tobacco. (0)
- 24: TIL Reagan and Gorbachev Agreed to Pause the Cold War in Case of an Alien Invasion. (0)
- 24: TIL the famous line from the film Captain Phillips “Look at me. I’m the captain now.” was improvised by actor Barkhad Abdi who had no prior acting experience. (0)
- 24: TIL of a Russian family who were cut off from all human contact for 40 years in the Siberian wilderness. They were completely unaware that World War 2 had occurred. (0)
- 24: TIL rodents living outside of captivity still enjoy running in wheels because it gives them a self-rewarding “runner’s high” (0)
- 24: TIL that Angelina Jolie once tried to hire a hitman to kill her, because she felt that a murder would be easier on her family than her committing suicide. The would-be-hitman talked her out of it by asking her to wait a month. (0)
- 24: TIL that Robert Englund (Freddy Krueger) auditioned for the role of Han Solo and after he got back from the audition, he pushed his friend Mark Hamill, who was sleeping on Englund’s couch at the time, to audition for Luke Skywalker. (0)
- 24: TIL that while repairing a whale enclosure divers during the cold war heard a human-like voice saying “out, out, out,” and got out of the water to see nobody. A beluga whale named Noc began to mimic human speech and attempted to communicate with them. (0)
- 24: TIL that an Alabama bloodhound joined a half marathon after her owner let her out to go pee. She ran the entire 13.1 miles and finished 7th. (0)
- 24: TIL that in Switzerland it’s illegal to have just one guinea pig because they get too lonely and need a friend. (0)
- 24: TIL Keanu Reeves turned down a $11 million offer to reprise his role as Jack Traven in “Speed 2: Cruise Control” in favor of playing the main role in “The Devil’s Advocate” opposite to Al Pacino (0)
- 24: TIL A group of guys made a to scale model of the solar system in Black Rock Desert, Nevada. They felt that pictures online couldn’t capture the size of our solar system and they wanted to give an accurate example. (0)
- 24: TIL the patent for toilet paper (1891) features an illustration that would imply the correct way the roll should be placed would be so the paper hangs over, and not under. (0)
- 24: TIL: GPS signals are being spoofed in some areas of Moscow: “the fake signal, which seems to center on the Kremlin, relocates anyone nearby to Vnukovo Airport, 32 km away. The scale of the problem did not become apparent until people began trying to play Pokemon Go.” (0)
- 24: TIL of Nellie Bly, a 19th century female journalist who went around the world in 72 days, pretended to be insane in order to expose the deplorable conditions in mental asylums, patented two designs for steel cans and ran a million-dollar iron manufacturing business, all before the age of 40. (0)
- 24: TIL of a North Korean defector who escaped to China, returned to see his family, then escaped again to Thailand, went to Argentina, then trekked through South and Central America to sneak into the US through Mexico. He is now a US citizen. (0)
- 24: TIL A dad in China hired gamers to kill his son in video games so the son would start looking for a job and get a life (0)
- 24: TIL Prince was a sensational ten pin bowler who could pretty much get a strike at will and wore furry knee high boots when bowling. (0)
- 24: TIL Test audiences hated ‘Dirty Dancing’ and the producer was so disappointed in the final product he said “Burn the negative, and collect the insurance.” Expected to be a box office bomb, instead was a smash hit,was the #1 video rental of ’88, and was first film to sell a million copies on video. (0)
- 24: TIL about the Oakland Buddha, placed by a resident on a street corner to prevent illegal dumping, the statue has now become a shrine for the local Vietnamese population who leave offerings and have even built a shelter for the Buddah. Crime in the area dropped 82% (0)
- 24: TIL that wearing of the Fez hat is illegal in Turkey, having been banned in 1925 (0)
- 24: TIL the saying “when one door closes, another opens” is a Alexander Graham Bell quote which he then followed by saying “but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.” (0)
- 24: TIL an Icelandic tradition called Jólabókaflóð exists, where books are exchanged as Christmas Eve presents and the rest of the night is spent reading them and eating chocolate. (0)
- 24: TIL a convicted murderer was once granted a retrial after it was discovered that four members of the jury used a Ouija board to contact the victim before rendering their verdict. (1)
- 24: TIL Hawaii has nearly one tourist die each week while engaged in common vacation activities like swimming, snorkeling, hiking and going on scenic drives (0)
- 24: TIL Quebec banned ads for toys and fast food aimed at children under 13, resulting in lowered childhood obesity rates. (0)
- 24: TIL- When Dolly Parton went to a Dolly Parton look alike contest she lost to a man dressed like her. (0)
- 24: TIL that as a child, Michael Jackson’s father would torment him about his appearance, calling him ‘fat-nose’. Michael went on to have four rhinoplasties and fussed over how his body and face looked for the rest of his life. (0)
- 24: TIL: In 2011, Fleshlight, a brand of artificial-vagina sex-toys, sent a complimentary package of its products to the members of the SEALs team that killed Osama bin Laden. (0)
- 24: TIL Sir Ian McKellen broke down on the set of the Hobbit, announcing “This is not why I became an actor.”, due to filming the entire movie alone with the dwarves edited in afterwards. (0)
- 24: TIL: Rick Moranis stopped acting in 1997, after this wife died from breast cancer, so he could raise raise his children. (0)
- 24: TIL that The Beatles had a specific clause in their contract that stated that they would not ever have to play for a segregated audience. (0)
- 24: TIL that the band playing most of the songs on Michael Jackson’s Thriller album was Toto. (0)
- 24: TIL that if you planted the seeds of a Granny Smith apple, you wouldn’t get Granny Smith apple trees. Apples aren’t “true to seed”. (0)
- 24: TIL Carrie Fisher delivered a cow tongue inside a Tiffany box to a predatory producer who had assaulted her friend. She said, “The next delivery will be something of yours in a much smaller box!” (0)
- 24: TIL the Wright brothers didn’t like to fly together in fear of both of them dying in an accident. They wanted at least one of them to survive to carry on research. (0)
- 24: TIL of Douglas Albert Munro, the only US Coast Guard to receive the Medal of Honor. Whilst providing cover for ground troops with his boat, Munro was fatally wounded. The last words he said were, “did they get off?” referring to the soldiers he’d saved. He was 22 years old. (0)
- 24: TIL that George Washington had his own personal recipe for egg nog that he would serve to guests, which included one pint brandy, 1/2 pint rye whiskey, 1/2 pint Jamaica rum, and 1/4 pint sherry wine (0)
- 24: ELI5: Depressive realism (0)
- 24: TIL that Trader Joe’s has a “try before you buy” policy – where employees will open nearly ANYTHING for you to sample (0)
- 23: ELI5: Why are some things “so cute it hurts?” (0)
- 23: TIL that Apelles, an ancient Greek painter, was considered by many, including Pliny, to be the greatest artist in the world. Pliny recorded that Alexander the Great so admired Apelles’s work that he gave his concubine to him. Today, none of Apelles’s original works have survived. (0)
- 22: TIL that the mysterious baroque painter Johannes Gumpp is known to have painted only one self portrait which also happens to be a triple self portrait in which he appears from behind painting his own face reflected in a mirror. (0)
- 21: ELI5: How does the satellite business work? How do the small telecom companies get access to satellites that costed millions to get into orbit? (0)
- 21: ELI5: How does the body separates water from stomach acid? (0)
- 21: TIL that parts of Africa no longer want your clothing donations. The vast amount of these imports have devastated local clothing industries and led the region to rely far too heavily on the West. (0)
- 21: ELI5: How distance is computed in video games? (0)
- 20: TIL that the snow in ‘The Wizard of Oz’ was asbestos. The Wicked Witch’s broom was made of asbestos, as was the Scarecrow’s entire outfit despite the fact that asbestos’ health risks were already known at the time in 1939. (0)
- 20: TIL Oprah Winfrey owns a private road across Maui which cuts out hours of driving time. No one else is allowed to use the road. (0)
- 19: TIL Robin Williams provided 14 hours of improvised lines for his first animated voice work in ‘Ferngully: The Last Rainforest’. Originally given an 8-minute part, after impressing the director, Williams’ screen time was tripled. (0)
- 19: TIL that GameStation, a UK video game retailer, added a clause to their T&C’s that stated that you surrender your immortal soul when you place an order through their site, to show that people don’t read them. They now own 7500+ souls. (0)
- 18: TIL when George Westinghouse fell into financial problems and asked Nikola Tesla for relief from the royalties Westinghouse agreed to, Tesla tore up the contract that would bring him millions. “I’m not interested in money, I’m interested in leaving something behind for the humankind”. (0)
- 18: TIL for the first 40 million years that woody trees were around, wood was not biodegradable…until a fungus figured out how to rot it (0)
- 18: TIL that a company in England accidentally sent letters to some of their wealthy customers that began “Dear Rich Bastard” and one customer complained who did not receive the letter because he felt that his wealth warranted the “Rich Bastard” title (0)
- 17: TIL Rob McElhenney from “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” willingly gained 50 pounds in preparation for Season 7 of the show. He consumed 5000 calories per day, and only stopped when his doctor said that his lifestyle was putting too much stress on his heart. (0)
- 17: TIL that years before she was famous, Keira Knightley played Natalie Portman’s double in “The Phantom Menace”, and when the girls were in full makeup, even their mothers had trouble telling them apart. (0)
- 17: TIL Those who see Earth from space experience “The Overview Effect:” A remarkable sense of connection with the rest of the human race, and a desire for world peace. (0)
- 16: TIL Pearl Jam discovered Ticketmaster was adding a service charge to all their concert tickets without informing the band. The band then created their own outdoor stadiums for the fans and testified against Ticketmaster to the United States Department of Justice (0)
- 16: TIL Humans are the only mammals that develop breasts that are permanently enlarged. (0)
- 16: TIL that double stuffed Oreos are only stuffed 1.86x more than regular Oreos. (0)
- 15: ELI5: How was Russia able to redirect all cloud traffic through their country from multiple sources like Apple, Microsoft… Etc. Wouldn’t they have to compromise all the individual systems (like apple) to do this? What are the broader implications of this? (0)
- 15: TIL that one of the main engineers behind NASA’s Challenger rocket, which exploded in 1986, revealed that after NASA would not heed his warnings against launching in the cold weather, he told his wife the night before the launch, “It’s going to blow up.” (0)
- 15: TIL in the 1880s, many farmers communicated by connecting their phones to barbed wire fences. This process often allowed for up to 20 people to be connected at once, everyone’s phone would ring regardless of who called, and the invention helped many farmers overcome depression and loneliness. (0)
- 15: TIL that Arnold Schwarzenegger started a bricklaying business when he first came to America and became a millionaire after buying and selling houses before he became an actor. (0)
- 15: TIL that 2,000-year-old seeds were discovered in 1963 inside an ancient jar in Israel. They were planted in 2005 and a tree that had been extinct for over 1800 years sprouted. (0)
- 14: TIL British celebrity Katie Hopkins condemned parents who give geography-inspired names to their children in an interview. When the presenter pointed out that her daughter is called India she said “that’s not related to a location” (0)
- 14: TIL Thomas Jefferson believed Jesus’s teachings were “the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man,” but that they had been appropriated by his followers, resulting in a Bible that contained both “diamonds of wisdom” and the “dung” of ancient political agendas. (0)
- 14: TIL that pepper spray is banned from being used in war since it is considered a chemical weapon but is generally allowed as a riot control agent. (0)
- 14: TIL that in WWI trench guns were given to US soldiers skilled in trap shooting so they could shoot incoming grenades out of the air (0)
- 13: TIL: John Spinello, the inventor of the game ‘Operation’ sold it for $500 USD in 1964 to a toy inventor. It has since made more than $40 million in sales for the Milton Bradley Company. In 2014, he had to crowdfund to afford a $25,000 operation to fix his teeth. (0)
- 13: TIL Researchers suggest that the discovery of fire influenced human evolution. Fire allowed humans to cook their food, which made food easier to chew and digest—which, in turn, contributed to the reduction of human tooth and gut size. (0)
- 13: TIL that Axe advertising was targeted to work on insecure males. The ads were so successful that the brand eventually backpedaled, as the brand was being too closely associated with their target group. (0)
- 12: TIL during the exceptionally cold winter of 1795, a French Hussar regiment captured the Dutch fleet on the frozen Zuiderzee, a bay to the northwest of the Netherlands. The French seized 14 warships and 850 guns. This is one of the only times in recorded history where calvary has captured a fleet. (0)
- 12: TIL In 2013, a Pizza Hut GM Stood Up and Refused to Force His Employees to Work Thanksgiving, Believing They Should Get to Spend Time With Family Instead. (0)
- 12: TIL that because a patch of clovers usually contains around 10,000 plants in 13 square feet, you only have to search an area around the size of an office desk to find a four leaf clover. (0)
- 12: TIL in 1988, Cosmopolitan magazine ran an article stating that women had no chance of contracting HIV from sex with a man because HIV could not be transmitted in the missionary position (0)
- 11: TIL that in 2013, Star Wars was dubbed in Navajo, making it the first major film to be dubbed in a Native American language (0)
- 11: TIL Astronauts attach pieces of Velcro into their helmets to scratch their noses during space walks. (0)
- 11: TIL A 3M adhesive tape plant accidentally created a force field of static electricity that was strong enough to prevent humans from passing through. A person near this “wall” was unable to turn, and so had to walk backwards to retreat from it. (0)
- 10: TIL John Barrowman, who is gay, auditioned to play Will on “Will & Grace” but was turned down for being “too straight”. The role went instead to Eric McCormack, who actually is straight. (0)
- 10: TIL businessman Armand Hammer got asked so much if he worked at Arm & Hammer, he bought enough stock in the company to get on their board of directors (0)
- 10: TIL a Japanese professor searching to find out what happened to Einstein’s brain discovered that it was being kept in a mason jar by a retiree in Kansas, who would occasionally shave off slices with a kitchen knife and mail it to people if they asked for some of it (0)
- 10: TIL that peeling scotch tape in a vacuum produces radiation powerful enough to xray the human body (0)
- 09: TIL actress Kate Mara is the great-granddaughter of both Tim Mara (founder of the NY Giants) and Art Rooney (founder of the Pittsburgh Steelers). Her acting contracts have a clause stating that if any of these teams make it to the Super Bowl, she will attend the game before work. (0)
- 09: TIL Michael Crichton, author of Jurassic Park, believed that his professor at Harvard was giving him unfair grades. To prove it, he turned in a paper from George Orwell. He received a B-. (0)
- 09: TIL that Monster and similar companies make cans of water, so it appears that celebrities are drinking their product while actually just drinking water. (0)
- 08: TIL: De Beers has spent millions trying to detect the difference between “real” diamonds and modern lab-grown diamonds – so far to no avail – as the diamond supply floods with cheap chinese lab-grown gems. (0)
- 08: TIL A town in West Virginia named Mole Hill, WV changed it’s name to Mountain, WV so they could literally make a mountain out of a mole hill. (0)
- 08: TIL that James Cameron decided to quit his job as a truck driver to enter the film industry after watching Star Wars. (0)
- 07: TIL” George Washington allegedly said before his death that he “would never set foot on English soil again,” so when they erected a statue of him in London, they put US soil under the statue to honor that claim (0)
- 07: TIL A man from Spain skipped work for 6 years whilst still being payed before anyone noticed. (0)
- 07: TIL about James Fallon, a neuroscientist who studied the brain scans of psychopaths, only to discover that he was one himself (0)
- 06: TIL Carrie Fisher used gaffer’s tape to hold down her breasts because George Lucas ‘didn’t want her looking too aggressively feminine’. Carrie Fisher joked about it saying: ‘No breasts bounce in space, no jiggling in the Empire’. (0)
- 05: TIL When Tim Schafer, co-designer of Secret of Monkey Island was being interviewed for LucasArts, he said he was a big fan of LucasArts’ game “Ballblaster”. The interviewer told him the game was named “Ballblazer” and only the pirated copies were named “Ballblaster” (0)
- 05: TIL Marcia Lucas, George Lucas’ then wife, was the reason for major changes to the Original Star Wars film. Obi Wan’s death, Leia’s good Luck Kiss and re-editing the trench run to increase tension were all her ideas. She won the Academy Award for editing the film while George did not for directing. (0)
- 05: TIL when men don’t masturbate for 7 days their testosterone levels increase by 45.7%. (0)
- 05: TIL that the Chinese use drones equipped with flame-throwers to fight trash stuck in power lines. (0)
- 04: TIL that over 1983-2000, 96% of US plane crash victims survived. (0)
- 04: TIL – During WWI, King Albert I of Belgium personally led the defense against the Germans, while the Queen served as a nurse, and their son enlisted in the infanty. (0)
- 03: ELI5: Why does popular software like Spotify, Firefox or Google Chrome have very small (less than 1 megabyte) installer files when all they do is download larger amounts of data immediately after starting? (0)
- 03: TIL that whilst Filming the Wizard of Oz, Judy Garland was shunned by the Scarecrow, Tinman and Cowardly Lion due to jealousy. Her only friend on the set was Margaret Hamilton who played the Wicked Witch of the West (0)
- 03: TIL it takes more water to make a water bottle than the water it contains (0)
- 02: YSK: You can use incognito mode to get around most “you’ve ran out of free views” paywalls, like on WaPo (0)
- 02: YSK How to safely approach a dog, and your kids should too (0)
- 02: YSK: Copiers have internal hard drives that store every document copied, faxed and printed. (0)
- 02: YSK: You are personally responsible for keeping copies of your immunization records. (0)
- 02: ELI5: Surveyors who survey land and roads before a new construction project. What are you doing? (0)
- 02: TIL of Magdalena Solis, a Mexican prostitute who was paid to imitate an Incan goddess as part of a scam. She then began to genuinely believe she was a goddess, took over the cult, and started sacrificing her followers. (0)
- 02: TIL of the “Pompeii Masturbator:” a man who appears to have been forever immortalised in the midst of some personal time. (0)
- 01: TIL if you threw a stone overboard above the Mariana Tench (6.8 mi deep) it would take an hour for it to hit the ocean floor. (0)
- 01: ELI5: Why do car windows get a grid pattern on them (0)
- 01: TIL Ronnie O’Sullivan, considered one of the greatest snooker players of all time, once purposely missed a maximum score of 147 by one point because he didn’t think the £10,000 prize was high enough. (0)
- 01: TIL that John Cleese once defaced his school’s grounds “as a prank, by painting footprints to suggest that the statue of Field Marshal Earl Haig had got down from his plinth and gone to the toilet” (0)
- November 2017 (139)
- 30: TIL The invention of cultured pearls largely destroyed the economy of Kuwait due to the reliance on pearl diving. (0)
- 30: ELI5: Why does chewing mint gum make everything you drink feel like liquid nitrogen? (0)
- 29: ELI5: As the universe expands, what is happening on a micro level where new space is being created (or stretched)? (0)
- 29: Dog going the distance & Octopus outsmarts the shark (0)
- 29: TIL Nearly 8% of the human genome is virus DNA. Meaning some of our ancestors survived a virus but still carry the DNA it inserted. (0)
- 29: ELI5: Is there a chemical reason we don’t make banana jam or jelly? Or is it just some weird flavour preference that the whole world seems to share? (0)
- 29: TIL it is illegal under German law to deny the holocaust, which is punishable by up to 5 years in prison. (0)
- 28: ELI5: What’s the difference between UEFI and BIOS? (1)
- 27: IWTL How to make electronic music (0)
- 27: IWTL about the most basic equipment I need to play music shows and sing and how to hook it all up properly and in a time effective manner. (0)
- 27: Why some animals live for so long compared to others (0)
- 27: TIL that Starbucks sometimes operates at a loss intentionally and clusters several locations in a small geographical area to become anti-competitive in the market. (0)
- 27: Learn to read Korean – It’s pretty easy (0)
- 27: TIL In 1651, when king Charles II was forced into exile by Oliver Cromwell, the king was aided in his escape to France by the Pendrill family. After the restoration of the crown in 1660, the king rewarded them, and a yearly pension is still paid to the descendants of the Pendrill family to this day. (1)
- 27: ELI5: How can a piece of paper folded 103 times be larger than the observable universe? (0)
- 27: TIL A researcher once played a recording of an elephant who had died. The sound was coming from a speaker hidden in a thicket. The family went wild calling, looking all around. The dead elephant’s daughter called for days afterward. The researchers never again did such a thing. (0)
- 27: ELI5: Maternal haplogroups mean we’re all descended from the same woman? (0)
- 26: Technique with speed (0)
- 26: ELI5: With all the technological advances of the current millennium, why are flights from Point A to Point B the same duration as decades ago? Why aren’t commercial airplanes flying significantly faster today than decades ago? (0)
- 26: ELI5: What causes the sticky, frictional feeling you get on your hands after using bar soap? (0)
- 26: ELI5: What was the Old Fashioned cocktail called before it was old enough to be old fashioned? (0)
- 26: TIL in 1921, “Black Wall Street” was the wealthiest Black community in America before being attacked by an angry mob which killed hundreds of Black residents and destroyed 35 city blocks. (0)
- 25: TIL of Regulatory Capture, when a governmental regulatory agency ceases to promote the interest of the public, but instead does the exact opposite by advancing the commercial or political concerns of special interest groups that dominate the industry or sector it is charged with regulating. (0)
- 25: ELI5: Why is chicken pox relatively harmless in children but potentially fatal in adults? (0)
- 25: TIL After the British set fire to Washington D.C. during the War Of 1812, a tornado appeared out of nowhere and put out the fire saving Washington D.C. (0)
- 25: ELI5: What is Dwarf Fortress and why it is made difficult? (0)
- 25: TIL The day after Thanksgiving is the busiest day for Plumbers around the United States (0)
- 25: ELI5: How do we know when we’ve chewed something long enough? (0)
- 25: ELI5: How come spent nuclear fuel is constantly being cooled for about 2 decades? Why can’t we just use the spent fuel to boil water to spin turbines? (0)
- 25: TIL in Interstellar the depiction of a black hole required completely new CGI rendering software and was so accurate that it provided enough scientifical insight to publish three scientific papers (0)
- 25: ELI5: Why does increasing the time before stopping reduce the force of an impact? (0)
- 25: ELI5: How does being vegetarian change your body? What happens to your body if you started to eat meat after 20 years of being veggie? (0)
- 25: ELI5: When there’s a mirror scene in a movie or television show, how do they get the shot without showing the camera in the mirror, especially with a head on face shot? (0)
- 25: ELI5: Why does boiling water stop rolling when you stir it? (0)
- 25: ELI5: In extremely cold weathers, why is it that we layer 3-4 and sometimes more pieces of clothing for our upper body, but not do the same for our lower body? (0)
- 24: ELI5: Why can’t retail deodorant sprays (Axe, Old Spice, Dove) replicate the fragrance of boutique colognes (Burberry, Hugo Boss, even CKs)? (0)
- 24: TIL 2000-year-old graffiti was discovered in the ancient city of Pompeii, such as “On April 19th, I made bread.” and “If anyone does not believe in Venus, they should gaze at my girlfriend.” (0)
- 24: ELI5: How can dust float in the air? Surely the dust particles are heavier than air, so they should sink. (0)
- 23: TIL Thomas Jefferson was Deist, the belief that a God created the universe but hasn’t interfered with it since. (0)
- 23: TIL Eaths magnetic poles flip on average every 200,000 – 300,000 years. Last time it flipped? 780,000 years ago. (0)
- 23: ELI5: The economics of the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade? (0)
- 23: ELI5: Can someone explain how what happens when you consume sugar? I hear terms like Glucose, Insulin, some gets transferred to fat cells etc etc (0)
- 23: TIL that after its tourism sector boomed, Kazakhstan’s foreign minister thanked Sacha Baron Cohen in 2012 for the release of Borat after the country saw a 10x increase in issued visas. (0)
- 23: TIL: When FDR died, Eleanor Roosevelt told Harry Truman that the president was dead. When he asked there was anything he could do for her, she replied, “Is there anything we can do for you? For you are the one in trouble now.” (0)
- 23: ELI5: How do smelling salts wake you up after you’ve been unconscious? (0)
- 23: Watch the moment a North Korean soldier defected to the South (0)
- 23: Chainsaw Elvis (0)
- 23: ELI5: Off Camera flash Duration and Shutterspeed (0)
- 23: ELI5: Why scientists can’t create a living organism from scratch (0)
- 22: TIL that Mother Teresa did not work to alleviate poverty, lied to donors about how contributions were spent, allowed the sick to suffer as she believed suffering was a gift from god, but opted for advanced heart treatment for herself. (0)
- 22: TIL that a 2012 survey of 1,000 Americans found that 45% of them wished they could skip Christmas due to financial pressures (0)
- 22: TIL as a child, martial arts actor Jet Li was asked by Richard Nixon to be his personal bodyguard. Li replied, “I don’t want to protect any individual. When I grow up, I want to defend my one billion Chinese countrymen!” (0)
- 22: TIL the word “dashboard” originated as a barrier of wood or leather fixed at the front of a horse-drawn carriage or sleigh to protect the driver from mud or other debris “dashed up” (thrown up) by the horses’ hooves. (0)
- 22: ELI5: How do small, isolated groups of people (like the people who live on small islands) maintain enough genetic diversity to avoid genetic defects in the long term, both in modern times and in antiquity? (0)
- 22: Ninja Dad reflex of a bike mechanic saved not only 1 but 2 children! (0)
- 22: TIL that 28 fossils of the largest extinct species of snake were discovered in a coal mine of Columbia. The “Titanoboa” lived about 65 million years ago. The species clocked out at about 48 feet long and weighed roughly 2,500 lb. (0)
- 22: ELI5: How is it possible that ISP’s can see what you are up to online? I thought HTTPs encrypted your traffic so it can’t be read? (0)
- 22: TIL John F. Kennedy’s brain was removed and stored in the National Archive after his autopsy. The brain was subsequently lost and remains missing to this day. (0)
- 22: TIL The League of Women Voters used to run presidential debates that gave every nominee a equal amount of time to speak, Republicans and Democrats joined together to make the Commission for Presidential Debates, making it harder for third parties to be fairly represented (0)
- 22: Currently the residents in Barrow, Alaska are saying goodbye to the sun. Until January 22nd. (0)
- 22: TIL that Aeschylus, the ancient Greek tragedian, was supposedly prophesied to die from a falling object, and therefore stayed outdoors. He was killed when an eagle dropped a tortoise on him, mistaking his bald head for a rock. (0)
- 22: ELI5: What happens that makes beer taste terrible after warming up and then re-chilling? What makes beer ‘skunky’? (0)
- 22: TIL that the World Bank stopped tracking inflation in Zimbabwe in November 2008, when it reached 79.6 billion percent. One year later, the country abandoned its currency. The exchange rate at the time was $35 quadrillion Zimbabwean dollars to $1 USD. (0)
- 22: ELI5: What’s special about CO2 that we add it to water/soda and not other gasses? Why not use compressed air or another gas? (0)
- 22: ELI5: How do “text x to xxxxx” phone shortcode numbers work? (0)
- 22: ELI5: If/do our bodies swell in certain areas to protect a hurt or damaged area. Why do we use things like ice packs to reduce swelling of that area? (0)
- 21: Bonsai tree castle (0)
- 21: TIL that due to the way a rotting apple releases ethylene (which accelerates rotting), one bad apple really does ruin the whole bunch (0)
- 21: ELI5: When food goes stale, does it also become less nutricious? (0)
- 21: ELI5: How do mines handle snow? Like several meters. Aren’t they pressure sensitive and wouldn’t the added pressure just blow up the mine? (0)
- 21: TIL on 9/11, despite security telling people to stay, Aon executives began evacuating their employees and thus saved 924 lives. (0)
- 21: TIL that the ADE 651; an inert rod of metal with a plastic hinge, was sold as a bomb detector. It was used by the militaries of Iraq, Afghanistan and more than a dozen other countries for years before anyone noticed that it did nothing at all. (0)
- 21: ELI5: What exactly stops our bodies from defecating and urinating as we sleep? What acts as an “alarm” that jolts us awake when we do need to do these things? (0)
- 21: TIL that the Slinky was invented by accident, when a Mechanical Engineer was working to devise springs that could keep sensitive ship equipment steady at sea. After accidentally knocking some samples off a shelf, he watched in amazement as they gracefully “walked” down instead of falling. (0)
- 21: TIL that the Nintendo character Kirby was named after John Kirby, the legal counsel for Nintendo who helped them win their lawsuit with Universal Studios in 1982. John Kirby was gifted a sailboat Christened the “Donkey Kong” and given exclusive rights to name any boat he owned “Donkey Kong.” (0)
- 21: ELI5: why do tongues get weird bumps when burnt or after eating something really sweet or really salty? (0)
- 21: World highest climbing wall (0)
- 21: Smart Crow (0)
- 21: ELI5: Why do singers from earlier eras (such as the 1920’s) sound different from singers today and why can’t many people still replicate that tone? (0)
- 21: TIL that early humans hunted animals by chasing them to exhaustion. “Persistence hunting” takes advantage of humans’ two legs and ability to sweat, which makes us stronger distance runners than prey. (0)
- 21: Bikeball (0)
- 21: TIL that Peter Weller, the actor most famous for playing Robo Cop earned PhD in Art History, writing a dissertation on the Italian Renaissance in 2014 (0)
- 21: TIL roman emperor Diocletian retired in 305 AD to grow cabbages and tend to his vegetable gardens. (0)
- 21: Archer shoots arrows that change direction mid air (0)
- 21: TIL Metallica’s ‘Master of Puppets’ was deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” enough for preservation in the National Recording Registry by the United States Library of Congress in 2016, the first metal recording to do so. (0)
- 21: The bald Uakari’s head looks like it belongs on a different animal. (0)
- 21: ELI5: Why do companies (Google, Apple, etc.) that have billions of dollars worth of debt not pay it off when they have the money for it? (0)
- 21: Urban Skiing (0)
- 21: 3D-Printed Millenium Falcon (Timelapse) (0)
- 21: TIL the human eye is capable of seeing some ultra-violet light but it is filtered out by the lenses in our eye. Painter Claude Monet had that lens removed due to cataracts and may have been able to see ultra-violet in his right eye. (0)
- 20: The Saiga antelope looks like an animal out of a science fiction movie or video game (0)
- 20: ELI5: How do air breathing sea animals like dolphins or whales not drown during violent seastorms? (0)
- 20: ELI5: why is math (statistics, calculus, etc) so important for a strong programmer? (0)
- 20: TIL the German Parliament has the grafiti “I f**k Hitler in the a**” preserved as a historic monument on one of its walls (0)
- 20: TIL that during Charles Manson’s trial, the judge began carrying a revolver under his robe after Manson charged at him with a pencil. (0)
- 20: The Most Painful Word Search Ever (0)
- 20: TIl that in Welsh folk legend, corgis were a gift from the woodland fairies, and that the breed’s markings were left on its coat by fairy harnesses and saddles. (0)
- 20: Scary security camera footage of the recent Mexico earthquake (0)
- 20: ELI5: If computers are lightning-fast at running calculations and performing tasks, why does “freezing” take seconds or even minutes? (0)
- 20: TIL that despite US denial for 26 years, eight members of the Alabama Air National Guard volunteered to pose as Cuban rebel pilots during the Bay of Pigs invasion. Of these 8, 4 were killed when promised air cover never arrived, with two of the pilots dying in a firefight after being shot down. (0)
- 20: TIL that Sir Richard Branson dislikes the formality of neck ties so much that he often carries around a pair of scissors with him, ready to cut the ties off of unsuspecting tie wearers. He even has a cushion that he keeps at his home on Necker Island made up from the ties of some of his victims. (0)
- 20: How pencils are made (0)
- 20: Turkish Coffee being brewed in hot sand (0)
- 20: TIL there was a German architect who devoted his whole life to promote his grand scheme of damming and draining the Mediterranean to create vast amounts of land and to unite Europe and Africa into one super continent. (0)
- 20: World Formula 1 champion driver Lewis Hamilton playing s dangerous game with a tiger (0)
- 20: Creepy Spiderman – Ribbon worm shooting its proboscis (0)
- 20: TIL King Gustav III of Sweden commuted the death sentences of a set of twins to life imprisonment if one drank 3 pots of coffee and the other drank 3 pots of tea to test the effects of the newly introduced coffee. (0)
- 20: TIL That the stormtrooper who hit his head on the door in the original Star Wars was also the stormtrooper who got mind tricked with “these are not the droids you’re looking for”. His name is Wanten. (0)
- 20: ELI5: Submariners, from the point of view of the crew aboard. Once submerged, do subs ever experience “rough seas”? (0)
- 20: ELI5: When doing the same amount of physical labor, why do some people sweat a lot while others don’t? (0)
- 20: TIL that by law, no United States officer can outrank George Washington. He was posthumously promoted to Six-Star General in 1976. (0)
- 19: TIL that Nintendo sued Galoob to prevent the release of its NES cheating device, the Game Genie; a legal battle followed. But for the Sega Genesis version, Sega not only allowed its release, but officially licensed it. (0)
- 19: ELI5: Why do we wake up starving the morning after a night of binge eating? (0)
- 19: ELI5: They say 70% of taste is smell. When we smell, let’s say a public restroom, are we actually inhaling and “tasting” particles? (0)
- 19: TIL Christopher Columbus was stuck in Jamaica with angry natives refusing to give him food. Knowing that a lunar eclipse was going to happen, Columbus told the natives that his gods were angry for refusing him food. After the eclipse, the scared natives gave him lots of food and begged for mercy. (0)
- 19: TIL that when humans domesticated wolves, we basically bred Williams syndrome into dogs, which is characterized by “cognitive difficulties and a tendency to love everyone” (0)
- 19: TIL of ‘The Great Impostor’, who successfully impersonated a career as a ship’s doctor, a civil engineer, a sheriff’s deputy, an assistant prison warden, a doctor of applied psychology, a hospital orderly, a lawyer, a child-care expert, amonk, an editor, a cancer researcher, and a teacher (0)
- 19: TIL That 7% of all American adults (which equates to around 16 million people) believe that chocolate milk comes from brown cows (0)
- 19: ELI5: How does modern recycling work? How are containers filled with food handled? What percentage of recyclables are actually thrown out? (0)
- 19: TIL that adding salt on pineapples makes it sweeter. The salt reacts with the acids of the fruit, thus converting into a neutral compound and losing the sour taste. Because of this, the pineapple then becomes sweeter. (0)
- 19: TIL that the song “Dick In a Box” by the Lonely Island won an Emmy (0)
- 19: ELI5:What are the main differences between popular opiates and why do people choose to do some over others for recreational purposes? (0)
- 19: ELI5: Why is it so difficult to type (i.e. move your fingers quickly and precisely, or even at all) when your hands are very cold? (0)
- 19: ELI5: Why do some alcoholics suffer life threatening withdrawl symptoms when others with the same drinking habits don’t when they quit? (0)
- 19: TIL that Homer Simpson’s iconic exclamation “D’oh!” is never explicitly used in any Simpson’s Script. All the script ever says is “annoyed grunt” (0)
- 19: TIL in 2008 Dmitry Agarkov changed a credit card agreement to his benefit – and the bank signed it. When in 2010 the bank wanted him to pay late fees, he sued it, as according to the changed deal, it owed him money – 24m rubles (ca. $727k). It all ended with an out-of-court settlement. (0)
- 18: TIL the original developer of Plants vs. Zombies was fired after objecting to its sequel becoming more pay to win (0)
- 18: TIL that the five-mile-long Mackinac Bridge has a program that sends a crew member to drive people across if they’re too afraid to drive themselves. It gets between 1,200 to 1,400 calls every year (0)
- 18: ELI5: Water is H2O, hydrogen peroxide is H2O2, how can one extra oxygen molecule turn into something that can kill you (0)
- 18: TIL the oldest known individual tree in the world is 5,067 years old, yet there are no photos of the tree online, and its location is kept secret to protect it (0)
- 18: ELI5: Why do planes need to turn? (0)
- 18: ELI5: How can a needle on a Vinyl record recreate music perfectly including the Audio highs and lows? (0)
- 18: ELI5: How can the gunpowder inside the ammo shell explode of there’s very limited oxygen for combustion? (0)
- 18: TIL: The NHS in the UK had only one man registered as a rectal teaching assistant, offering his anus to be examined by trainee doctors. TIAL: He has lost his job to a robot anus. (0)
- 18: TIL butterscotch is made with butter and brown sugar. Toffee is made with the same ingredients, but cooked longer. (0)
- 18: TIL Vitaminwater is basically sugar-water, to which about a penny’s worth of synthetic vitamins have been added. A bottle of vitaminwater contains 33 grams of sugar, making it more akin to a soft drink than to a healthy beverage (0)
- 18: TIL the city of Melbourne gave email addresses to trees so locals could report problems, but they received thousands of love letters instead (0)
- 18: ELI5: Why do Large Planes Require Horizontal and Vertical Separation to Avoid Vortices, But Military Planes Fly Closely Together With No Issue? (0)
- 18: TIL That the US Treasury planned to replace Alexander Hamilton’s face on the $10 bill with a notable woman from US history, but decided to instead change Jackson’s face on the $20 bill, almost entirely due to the popularity of “Hamilton” (0)
- October 2017 (8)
- 20: Mawlynnong ancient tree root bridge in India (0)
- 18: TIL that the Polish medal for couples who have made it to 50 years of marriage has a higher rank than the medal for deployment to Afghanistan (0)
- 18: TIL if you are thrown out of a Las Vegas strip club, you are entitled to be reimbursed your cover charge and the cost of any alcoholic beverage you purchased. (Las Vegas Code of Ordinances sec.6.06B.090(O).) (0)
- 18: TIL we call letters “uppercase” and “lowercase” because the original printing presses kept letter blocks in literal cases; since small letters were used more often, they kept them in the bottom case for easy access; thus, lowercase (and uppercase) were born. (0)
- 03: Kingfisher catching a fish underwater (0)
- 02: The “Sea Angel” slug swimming (0)
- 01: View inside the bomb bay from a B-52 (0)
- 01: TIL that most Americans aren’t aware of blackcurrant flavour (one of the most popular soft drink and confection flavours in the world) due to a ban on the plant in the 1900s because of its role in spreading disease among white pines, a principle industry of the growing American republic. (0)
- June 2017 (8)
- 15: ELI5: Why can’t the asteroid belt accumulate into one rocky planet? (0)
- 15: ELI5: Why is it important to do stretches before exercising (i.e. pull-ups, push-ups, weightlifting, etc)? (0)
- 15: ELI5: Since our bodies aren’t 100% efficient at absorbing nutrients from food, wouldn’t the nutritional information found on most food packaging be inaccurate, as not all of the calories, protein etc. are absorbed? (0)
- 15: ELI5: Why do we lose Appetite when we are anxious/Nervous? (0)
- 15: ELI5: Encryption and decryption with prime number factorisation (0)
- 15: Why do we switch over to other mammals milk, instead of sticking with breast milk, if it is made specifically for humans? Wouldn’t it be better for us, then say cows milk? (0)
- 15: Why do we continually need to search for new porn to arouse us? What exactly is it that eventually drains all previous porn off its original arousability? (0)
- 11: What is it about electricity that makes it so dangerous to the human body? (0)