TIL (Timeline I Learned)

TIL on February 13 1991 the United States Air Force dropped two bombs on a civilian bomb shelter in Baghdad Iraq, incinerating and boiling alive over 400 occupants, most of them women and children [Source, Comments]

TIL that prior to Wrigley Field getting lights for night games in 1988, the second to last stadium (and last American League stadium) to get lights was Tiger Stadium in 1948. [Source, Comments]

TIL that manatees, elephants and kangaroos are the only mammals whose teeth are continuously replaced throughout their lifetimes [Source, Comments]

TIL about PAN-PAN. PAN-PAN is the international standard distress signal that someone aboard a boat, ship, aircraft, or other vehicle uses to declare that they need help and that the situation is urgent but for the time being, does not pose an immediate danger to anyone's life or to the vessel. [Source, Comments]

TIL of Archias "the exile hunter": a famous ancient greek actor turned mercenary who entered the service of Antipater of Macedonia & undertook a covert mission to locate four Athenian orators, Antipater's political enemies who had gone into hiding. He located and eliminated all four of his targets [Source, Comments]

TIL in the U.S., surviving spouses or a surviving child qualify for a lump sum payout of $255, because it was three times the maximum monthly retirement benefit at the time of its conception in 1954, and has not increased in the last 72 years because it was never indexed to inflation. [Source, Comments]

TIL that soap operas get their name because they were sponsored by soap companies in order to make a TV show that housewives would watch so they could market their soap in the commercials. [Source, Comments]

TIL that most women in the Netherlands do not have an epidural during labor and a significant proportion give birth at home [Source, Comments]

TIL: Male lyrebirds fake "predator alarms" during sex to trick females into staying... By mimicking the sound of a nearby threat, they create a "sensory trap" that prevents the females from escaping before the male finishes! [Source, Comments]

TIL Robins Williams homeless rider clause wasn’t real [Source, Comments]

TIL that the White House employs three calligraphers; a chief calligrapher and two deputies. The Chief Calligrapher makes about $109,000 per year [Source, Comments]

TIL a convicted murderer locked in a Victorian asylum for the criminally insane secretly wrote over 10,000 definitions for the Oxford English Dictionary. The editors had no idea he was institutionalized until they visited him in person. [Source, Comments]

TIL about the term Euphemism Treadmill, which refers to a word substituted for one that is considered unpleasant or embarrassing, which can be motivated by a desire to not offend. Language used to talk about disability is often caught up in this phenomenon. [Source, Comments]

TIL about LUCA (Last Universal Common Ancestor), a single-celled microorganism which is the hypothesized to be the common ancestor of all life today. Most studies suggest LUCA to have existed by at least 3.5 billion years ago. [Source, Comments]

TIL that in 1990s Sony had the chance to buy the rights to all Marvel characters for 25 million. They opted to only buy the rights to Spider-Man [Source, Comments]

TIL in 1983 Jamaican election, main opposition party boycotted the election. It resulted ruling party winning all 60 seats with turnout of just 2.68% [Source, Comments]

TIL at the current rate of erosion, approximately 30 centimeters (12 inches) per year, in about 50,000 years Niagara Falls will have eroded the remaining 32 km (20 mi) to Lake Erie, and the falls will cease to exist. [Source, Comments]

TIL Marvin Pipkin, as a new GE recruit, solved the "impossible" task of making an inside-frosted lightbulb—a job handed to new hires as an induction ritual into the challenges of research—since every previous attempt had failed. Nobody had told him it couldn't be done. [Source, Comments]

TIL Theodore Roosevelt criticized Woodrow Wilson for not declaring war against the Ottoman Empire or Bulgaria and argued that Constantinople should be given to Greece. [Source, Comments]

TIL that in 2022, Saudi Arabia declared a public holiday to celebrate their national team's World Cup win over Argentina [Source, Comments]