TIL that 95% of Egyptians live within 5% of Egypt’s land area
TIL that Anne Ramsey, best known for her role in Throw Mama From The Train (1987), her slurred speech was due to operations for her throat cancer and was in pain during the whole production. She was nominated for an Oscar. Sadly she died of her throat cancer 6 months after the ceremony.
https://filmstories.co.uk/features/anne-ramsey-a-salute-to-an-80s-movie-hero/
TIL only one person knows where Freddie Mercury’s ashes were buried, and she has vowed never to tell.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Freddie_Mercury#Tributes_and_services
TIL about North Korean former soldier Oh Chong Song, who defected to South Korea by simply crashing his car into the DMZ and escaped under a shower of North Korean bullets.
TIL about the sport Slippery Stairs where contestants try to climb stairs covered in lube
https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/15q0ajb/til_about_the_sport_slippery_stairs_where/
TIL the reason why it's called upper and lower case letters is because when Gutenberg created his printing press the letter blocks were kept in wooden cases and the small letters were stored below the capital letters, ergo; lower case letters🤯
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-clrKOp5Co
TIL that when Susan Boyle when announcing the release of her album, tagged it as "#susanalbumparty". It should have read #SusanAlbumParty, or which was also misread as #SusAnalBumParty.
https://www.nme.com/blogs/hashtags-twitter-10-birthday-susan-boyle-2127822
TIL there's a digital SPFX programme named 'Kierasil' that is used for skin touch ups, named after Keira Knightly who was the actress the SPFX company invented it for.
https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/15pxfp6/til_theres_a_digital_spfx_programme_named/
TIL Syracuse, NY has the only upside-down traffic light in the world
TIL about Damacus Goat, a special breed of goats with odd features of their head that make them look like monsters
https://www.breedslist.com/damascus-goat.htm
TIL while chemical weapons were produced by the Nazis, they were not widely deployed. Other than fear of retaliation, factors which influenced this decision may have been that Adolf Hitler was gassed by British troops in 1918, and that the Nazis never developed effective gas masks for horses
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_chemical_warfare
TIL A cow-bison hybrid is called a beefalo. The breed was created to combine the characteristics of both animals for beef production.
TIL that Sean Connery whilst working with Lana Turner, was confronted by Turner’s gangster boyfriend Johnny Stompanato. Stompanato drew a gun on Connery, only to be disarmed and beaten up by the actor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Connery
TIL beryllium used to be called glucinium since French chemists noticed it tasted sweet
TIL Unconventional computing is computing by any of a wide range of new or unusual methods. It is also known as alternative computing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconventional_computing
TIL that in China, there is a problem with "gutter oil", which refers to recycled oil and is often oil that is actually scooped out of sewers and taken to a refinement facility. The oil then ends up sold at a discounted price, often to restaurants, and is visually very similar to new oil.
TIL “golden hour” also exists in the morning, not only in the evening
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_hour_(photography)
TIL about the 1983 "Gimli Glider" incident in which a Boeing 767 flying from Montreal to Edmonton ran out of fuel due to the ground crew making a metric conversion error when fueling. The pilot glided the plane and landed it on a decommissioned runway in Gimli which was being used for go-kart racing
https://www.cbc.ca/archives/when-a-metric-mix-up-led-to-the-gimli-glider-emergency-1.47540…
TIL That Antarctica is approximately 1.5 times larger than the United States.
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/icebridge/multimedia/fall11/antarctica-US.html
TIL when the word "pussy" popped up in regular dialogue around the sixteenth century, it didn’t have a sexual connotation at all. It was used as a term of endearment to describe women in general and didn’t actually get sexual until the nineteenth century
https://www.glamour.com/story/origin-of-the-word-pussy
