16 Times We Learned Something New In 2021 From Reddit Geniuses’
By Erin Whitten
- Pay toilets?
TIL that four high-school students in the ‘70s are the reason we no longer have pay toilets in America. They created an organization called CEPTIA, and were able to successfully lobby against the issue. 8 years later, pay toilets were all but nonexistent throughout the US.
byu/hwkfan1 intodayilearned
2. It hurts to be iconic.
TIL Daniel Radcliffe, who plays Harry Potter in the film series was allergic to his own glasses. He had a nickel allergy and suffered for weeks with mysterious bumps around his eyes, where the glasses touched his face. The nickel glasses were quickly replaced with hypoallergenic specs.
byu/epicdcboy intodayilearned
3. Sounds like a party!
TIL if you get a zebrafish drunk and put it in a tank of sober zebrafish, the sober fish will adopt it as their leader and follow the drunk fish around the tank.
by intodayilearned
4. Truly the king.
TIL Burger King has the rights to use its name throughout the entire United States, with the exception of a 20-mile radius surrounding a totally unrelated restaurant, also called Burger King, in Mattoon, Illinois.
byu/Elystian intodayilearned
5. We all know paper books are better.
TIL that paper books still outsells e-books by a huge margin, even among young people.
byu/MyStolenCow intodayilearned
6. Talk about dedication to your activism.
TIL about environmental activist Julia “Butterfly” Hill who lived in a 1500 year old California redwood tree (known as Luna) 180 feet (55 mm) off the ground for 738 days in order to prevent it from being chopped down by Pacific Lumber Company. She successfully saved the tree.
byu/AwesomeFrito intodayilearned
7. Potato’s are the key to life.
TIL of a French soldier who was taken as a POW and fed only potatoes during his captivity, and survived. Feeling like he should have died, he made it his life’s mission to convince the world of the nutritional value of potatoes, and his tomb in France is decorated with potatoes as a tribute.
byu/bearjew64 intodayilearned
8. Comfort is key to success.
TIL President Kennedy was prescribed a rocking chair for back pain. He found one he liked so much he bought 14 copies for the Oval Office, Camp David, Air Force One, and homes of his family. He also gifted them to heads of state.
byu/phatcrits intodayilearned
9. Who needs Wendy’s anyways.
TIL that there are no Wendy's in Europe due to a local Dutch snackbar owner owning the Wendy's trademark in Europe. They have been in a legal battle for years and Dutch courts side with the snackbar every time.
byu/Baaasbas intodayilearned
10. Would you try it?
TIL in 2016, the Swedish Tourism Council created a single phone number that connected the caller to a random Swede for you to have a conversation with. In the 79 days it was open, almost 200,000 calls were made with a combined 367 days worth of conversations.
byu/TravellingSaffa intodayilearned
11. Fans keep the checks coming…right?
TIL Buddy Holly asked his wife out on their first meeting and proposed to her on the second. His manager disapproved of the relationship saying it would upset his female fans, so during his tours she was presented as his secretary.
byu/emailrob intodayilearned
12. No soup for him.
TIL Jerry Seinfeld is banned from the New York soup stall that he used for the basis of The Soup Nazi episode of Seinfeld. Weeks after the episode aired, Seinfeld went in for lunch, and chef Al Yeganeh asked him to leave, unhappy with the moniker the show had given him.
byu/bawledannephat intodayilearned
13. Just in case you were wondering.
TIL when you see CNN playing in airport terminals you're actually watching a special version of the channel CNN produces just for airports
byu/fumbles26 intodayilearned
14. Your saying Yoda isn’t an important historical figure?
TIL Saudia Arabia accidentally printed thousands of textbooks containing an image of Yoda sitting next to King Faisal while he signed the 1945 UN charter
byu/geek_fest intodayilearned
15. When you’re literally the life of the party.
TIL that gut fermentation syndrome (called auto-brewery syndrome) is a rare disorder in which intestines produce ethanol from carbohydrates. If you have this disease, you're drunk all the time.
by intodayilearned
16. They don’t call them pigs for nothing!
TIL That a guinea pig named Randy somehow got into a female enclosure and impregnated over 100 female guinea pigs.
byu/_CAD3_ intodayilearned
