TIL Only one person has died so far in the Catacombs of Paris, In 1793, a man died in the catacombs. It is thought that he lost his light source and was left to die in the darkness. In 1804, 11 years later, his body was found, a few meters from a staircase that led to an exit [Source]

TIL the Australian ute was invented in response to a farmer’s wife’s letter in 1932. A woman from Victoria, wrote to Ford Australia’s general manager during the Depression, asking for a vehicle that was comfortable for driving to church on Sunday yet practical for hauling pigs to market on Mondays. [Source]

TIL the Central African Republic requires you to live there for 35 years, own land, and be awarded a national honour to become eligible for citizenship [Source]

TIL The Italian-American Civil Rights League campaigned to have the word "Mafia" considered a racial epithet. They were a Mafia front. [Source]

TIL about the the Lobster War, when Brazil declared war on France for illegally catching lobsters off its shores. [Source]

TIL Disneyland has had 104 deaths on park property since 1964. [Source]

TIL a 10-yr-old boy survived after he fell from a treehouse trying to escape a swarm of yellow jackets & landed face-first on a foot-long metal skewer. It went through his face, leaving six inches sticking out. However even at that depth, it didn't hit anything critical & barely injured him at all. [Source]

TIL about ‘TV pickup,’ a UK phenomenon where breaks in popular television programmes trigger a surge in electricity demand due kettles being switched on simultaneously. [Source]

TIL that in the early 1980s, Steve Miller learned that songs earn individual publishing royalties regardless of length. Using this to his advantage, he separated the 57 second long intro from his song "Sacrifice", named it "Electro Lux Imbroglio" and published it, earning thousands as a result. [Source]

TIL that Richard I or England and Philip II of France shared a bed as sign of friendship and a political unity in 1187. [Source]

TIL there’s a Brazilian film adaptation of Don Quixote performed entirely by actors with Down syndrome called Down Quixote. [Source]

TIL Emperor Commodus once set up a 14 days long extravaganza in the arena, which crowds were reluctant to attend because of a rumour that he was planning to reenact the stymphalian birds myth, in which "the birds" would be represented by the arena crowd and he would shoot arrows towards them [Source]

TIL that actresses Carole Landis and Rachel Roberts committed suicide over the end of their respective romantic relationships with actor Rex Harrison (who won the Best Actor Oscar for his performance in My Fair Lady) [Source]

TIL: The last United States President that didn’t drop a single bomb on a foreign country was: Jimmy Carter (1977-1981) [Source]

TIL in ‘76 a movie came out about a company that made an advanced AI, collects data on every person, and has to make data centers to store it. Governments then resort to espionage to try and control it, while the company uses it for political influence. That movie is called Deep Throat Part II. [Source]

TIL Ethiopia uses its own calendar, which is about 7–8 years behind the Gregorian calendar used by most of the world. [Source]

TIL that around 2400 BCE, migrants linked to the Bell Beaker culture arrived in Britain and largely replaced the earlier Neolithic farmers. Ancient DNA shows about 90% of the population’s ancestry changed within a few centuries, bringing high levels of steppe DNA to the islands. [Source]

TIL that people who do small acts of kindness for strangers often experience a measurable boost in happiness that can last for several hours. [Source]

TIL that only two women have attempted to assassinate a US President - Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, a member of the Manson family, and Sara Jane Moore, an FBI informant. Both attempts were against Gerald Ford in California within three weeks of each other. [Source]

TIL cleaner wrasse fish willingly enter and clean the mouths of larger, often predatory fish. Larger fish gather at cleaner wrasse "stations" and open their mouths. Cleaner fish enter their mouths and eat parasites; they get a meal, and the larger fish get cleaned of parasites. [Source]

TIL an embryo frozen in 1994 was successfully implanted 30 years later, resulting in a live birth in 2025 — the longest frozen embryo ever to result in a live birth, certified by Guinness World Records. [Source]