TIL bilinguals given the trolley problem in their native language chose to sacrifice one to save five less than 20% of the time. In their second language, about 50% chose to, because a foreign language lowers emotional resonance and triggers more utilitarian reasoning. [source, comments]

TIL that the French foreign legion maintains its own vineyard, with wine created by the retired legionnaires, and sold to support the villa. [source, comments]

TIL that we actually forget 70% of what we read in a day. [source, comments]

TIL that in 1841 Joseph Whitworth created the world’s first national screw thread standard, defining thread angle and pitch—and descendants of his system are still used today, including in cameras and computers [source, comments]

TIL there are still 3 confirmed living Nazi War Criminals. Helma Kissner, Bruno Dey, and Yaroslav Hunka [source, comments]

TIL that the Artotyrites were an early Christian sect that rather than offering bread and wine for Communion, offered bread and cheese. [source, comments]

TIL that when you remember something you're not accessing the original memory. your brain reconstructs it from scratch every time and slightly rewrites it in the process which is why memories change over time [source, comments]

TIL In the US the highest nominal price ever for gas per gallon was $4.22 on average in April 2022. The second highest was $4.06 per gallon on average in July 2008. [source, comments]

TIL that Conan O’Brien, David Letterman and Jay Leno all once made the same Dan Quayle joke on the same night without any knowledge of the others making the same exact joke. [source, comments]

TIL that while there are rogue waves there are also rogue holes in the ocean [source, comments]

TIL that Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles is named after William Mulholland the chief engineer of the Los Angeles Aqueduct without which LA would have not been able to grow as large as it did in the 1920s. [source, comments]

TIL the reason the Germans nicknamed the 588th Night Bomber Regiment "Night Witches" was because, when they cut the engines to their biplanes while making a bombing run, their planes gliding sounded like broomsticks. They fact that they were an all-women unit was a coincidence. [source, comments]

TIL that some humans can perceive magnetic fields subtly, with their brains showing reactions to Earth’s geomagnetic changes even without awareness [source, comments]

TIL that Indiana tried to pass a bill in 1897 that legally and incorrectly classified the mathematical term Pi as 3.2 [source, comments]

TIL the largest age gap between a U.S. president and his First Lady occurred when President Grover Cleveland, who was 49 years old, married Frances Folsom, who was 21, on June 2, 1886, in the only wedding in history of a sitting president in a room of the White House. [source, comments]

TIL Wellington R. Burt, 1831-1919 didn't leave his $100,000,000 estate to his children. His will had a "spite clause" which specified to wait until all his children and 21 years after his last grandchild while he was still alive had died. The estate was settled in 2011. [source, comments]

TIL that the world’s first "selfie" was taken in 1839 by Robert Cornelius, an amateur chemist and photography enthusiast. He had to sit still for over 15 minutes to capture the image. [source, comments]

TIL the CNS Ischemic Reflex is the body's most powerful reflex. A "last-ditch" survival effort, it triggers when the brain is starved of oxygen, causing massive vasoconstriction to force blood upward. This surge is so intense it can cause kidney failure by completely cutting off their blood supply. [source, comments]

TIL In 2016, researchers using a quantum light source found that humans could track whether a single photon was fired at their eye with a probability slightly better than chance. This suggests that while we don't "see" it as a bright spark, the information does reach our consciousness. [source, comments]

TIL that Velcro was invented in 1955 by Swiss engineer George de Mestral who got the idea after noticing burrs from a burdock plant clinging to his dog's fur during a hunting trip and spent 10 years developing the hook and loop design. [source, comments]