🎓 TIL - Today I Learned but no 🐝

TIL that in 1953 at the age of 77 the artist Alphaeus Philemon Cole moved into the famous Hotel Chelsea. He died there 35 years later at the age of 112 (And 136 days). He was the oldest man in the world at the time. Cole actively painted and exhibited up to the age of 103. [source, comments]

TIL that Canada's first Prime Minister thought war with the US was inevitable and proposed that British India send an army of Sikhs across the Pacific to hold San Francisco hostage as leverage during the conflict. [source, comments]

TIL India is the only country outside of africa with lion population. [source, comments]

TIL that female turkeys can clone themselves via parthenogenesis or a "virgin birth" - but this process will only ever produce male offspring. [source, comments]

TIL The first commercially available optical disc for video playback was the LaserDisc, released in 1978. It was 11.8 inches in diameter, double sided (you had to flip the disc in the middle of playback) and gained almost no market share in large part because consumers couldn't record with it. [source, comments]

TIL Breaking Bad S4E1 episode "Box Cutter" was screened at the Grauman's Chinese Theatre. Brian Cranston's daughter Taylor Dearden (Dr. Mel King from "The Pitt") was in attendance and fainted at the sight of blood, forcing officials to interrupt the screening. [source, comments]

TIL that the airport battle in Captain America: Civil War was almost entirely digital! ILM says 99% of what was shot was ultimately replaced with VFX. [source, comments]

TIL that before fish sticks became popular, companies tried selling frozen fish as "fishbricks" — blocks packaged like ice cream that customers were supposed to chop into portions at home. Supermarkets struggled to sell them. [source, comments]

TIL a wild leopard in India kept returning every night to sit beside a cow that had nursed it as an orphaned cub years earlier, apparently still recognizing her as its mother [source, comments]

TIL the first British edition of Moby-Dick accidentally omitted the epilogue in which Ishmael survives — so British reviewers complained the book was absurd, since it was narrated by a man who had drowned with the ship. [source, comments]

TIL that there are millions to hundreds of millions of Giant Squid (Architeuthis Dux) living in Earth's Oceans. We know this because of the sheer amount of Giant Squid found in the stomachs of Sperm Whales requires a breeding population to be at least that large to have reproductive sustainability. [source, comments]

TIL that The Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and Malta all have a higher percentage of English speakers than Canada. [source, comments]

Today I Learned That "Timor" and "Leste" Both Mean "East" so both East Timor and Timor Leste translate to "East East". "Timor" Comes From "Timur" Which Means East in Malay and "Leste" is East in Portuguese. [source, comments]

TIL the CIA once attemped to produce action figures of Osama bin Laden whose face was painted with a material that, when heated, would peel off to reveal a demon-like face. The goal of the program was to scare children and their parents aware from supporting Al-Qaeda. [source, comments]

TIL An enslaved man bought his freedom, then used his savings to buy 80 acres of land for $100. He founded the first U.S. town legally registered by a Black man, and sold plots to buy 16 family members out of slavery." [source, comments]

TIL: People cannot sneeze while they are fully asleep [source, comments]

TIL: In Fresno, a man tried to kill a spider with a blowtorch and ended up setting his house on fire. [source, comments]

TIL that when BT began phasing out the UK's iconic red telephone boxes, communities could buy some for just £1 and turn them into mini-libraries, defibrillator stations, and coffee kiosks. [source, comments]

TIL that in 2018, South Georgia Island was declared rodent-free after a $13.5 million eradication project using helicopters and sniffer dogs, helping protect millions of ground-nesting seabirds from rats introduced by 18th-century ships. [source, comments]

TIL that the Niger River begins in the Djallon Mountains of Guinea, only about 140 miles from the Atlantic Ocean, yet instead of flowing directly to the sea, it takes a sweeping 2,600-mile journey through West Africa before finally reaching the Atlantic in Nigeria. [source, comments]