TIL that Ioannis Ikonomou is the Chief Translator of the European Commision, speaking 21 of the 24 Official Languages. He is also the only Translator trusted with classified Chinese documents, which he considers his favorite Language, but also the most Complicated. [Source]

TIL The tea ruined at the Boston Tea Party had a value in 1773 equivalent to $2.3 Million USD in today's money. [Source]

TIL that to prove the idea that Clark Kent wearing glasses was enough to hide the fact that he is Superman, Henry Cavill, who played Superman in the 2016 film "Batman v Superman", walked around Times Square wearing a Superman shirt in 2016, and no one seemed to notice him. [Source]

TIL about "headspin hole", a common scalp injury in breakdancers, caused by years of performing headspins. The repeated friction causes a cone-shaped "breakdance bulge" to form. [Source]

TIL the Drake Equation—the famous formula used to estimate the number of active civilizations in our galaxy—was never intended to be a "solution." Frank Drake originally wrote it in 1961 simply as an organizational agenda for the world's first SETI meeting. [Source]

TIL - The spray from your mouth when yawning is likely due to a phenomenon called "gleeking," which is the involuntary ejection of saliva from the sublingual glands under your tongue. This can happen when the muscles in your mouth contract during yawning, creating a stream of salia. [Source]

TIL Illinois school worker Vera Liddell was sentenced to nine years in prison for stealing $1.5M worth of chicken wings [Source]

TIL the eruption from a Coke and Mentos geyser isn't caused by a chemical reaction, but rather a physical one. The surface of the Mento has millions of cavities which serve as nucleation sites for carbon dioxide to desaturate from. [Source]

TIL: In 1876, Mary Lincoln thanked friends who helped free her from an asylum by giving them Abraham Lincoln’s handwritten note: “As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy." [Source]

TIL that New Nissan Stadium, future home of the NFL’s Tennessee Titans, costs $2.1 billion dollars & is being constructed using $1.26 billion dollars of public funds. This makes it the largest allocation of Stadium Subsidy funds to a sports venue in U.S. history. [Source]

TIL the first commercial film to feature a woman, the 21-second Carmencita (1894), also became the first film ever banned in the United States. [Source]

TIL Single mothers spend less time on housework and get more sleep than married mothers [Source]

TIL that 45 years ago, Saudi Arabia built a 1,200-kilometer oil pipeline from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea, just in case the Strait of Hormuz ever got blocked [Source]

TIL that in 2025 a mini dachshund named Valerie was found alive after 529 days in the Australian wilderness. [Source]

TIL the plane crash that killed John F Kennedy Jr, his wife, and her sister was caused by “spatial disorientation”. Weather conditions were poor that night & Kennedy was not qualified to fly at night under instrument conditions. He did not request a weather briefing nor did he file a flight plan. [Source]

TIL that General Omar Bradley commanded the Twelfth United States Army Group after the Allied Invasion of Europe. The group was the largest body of American soldiers to ever serve under a single commander with 1.3 million military personnel. [Source]

TIL An African American Musician, Wary of Racism, Pretended to Be Indian, And Received Nationwide Fame. He Maintained This False Identity For The Rest Of His Life. [Source]

TIL about Jan Baalsrud. A Norwegian Commando who evaded German capture by swimming in arctic waters, was buried by an avalanche, hid in a cave, and amputated several of his own frostbitten toes with a knife, and was dragged on a stretcher to safety by villagers. [Source]

TIL that economists have a worse track record of having a correct prediction than random chance [Source]

TIL that when bilingual people switch languages mid-sentence, their brain doesn't even notice the switch. NYU researchers found that the brain uses the same mechanism to combine words regardless of whether they come from one language or two, meaning code-switching is neurologically seamless. [Source]

TIL after barely surviving the splashdown of the Liberty Bell 7, NASA astronaut Gus Grissom jokingly named the spacecraft for his next mission "Molly Brown" after the Broadway show "The Unsinkable Molly Brown". When NASA asked him to come up with a different name, he offered "Titanic". [Source]