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]

TIL the modern flush toilet was popularized by English businessman and plumber named Thomas Crapper. [Source]

TIL Americans streamed 57 billion minutes of The Office in 2020, 45% more than the second-place show Grey's Anatomy [Source]

TIL that During the French Revolution, Louis XVI ordered the arrest of a judge named D'Epremesnil. When the arresting officers came to the Palais de Justice, they did not know D'Epremesnil by sight, so all the judges stood up and cried "We are all D'Epremesnil!". No arrests were made that day. [Source]

TIL the botched restoration nicknamed "Monkey Christ" was deemed more culturally relevant than the original painting and preserved as-is. Tens of thousands of tourists visit the Spanish town of Borja every year to see it, and the restorer became a local celebrity until her passing in late 2025. [Source]

TIL that during the filming of Apocalypse Now (1979), lead actor Martin Sheen had a near fatal heart attack. This led to his brother, Joe Estevez, being a stand in for several scenes, as well as doing the voiceover narration for the film as he sounded nearly identical to his brother Martin [Source]

TIL in 2013, "Thrift Shop" by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis was able, as an independent song, to reach #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart without a major record label. It was only the second independent song to reach #1 in history at the time. [Source]

TIL that Sheb Wooley, famous for singing The Purple People Eater and voicing the Wilhelm Scream, also taught Roger Miller how to play guitar. [Source]

TIL that the person in charge of the Kamikaze defence of Okinawa, Admiral Matome Ugaki, flew the last Kamikaze flight himself. [Source]

TIL tea leaves have ~4% caffeine vs coffee beans at 0.9-2.6%. But coffee is brewed hotter and with more beans, so a cup of coffee still packs more caffeine than a cup of tea. [Source]

TIL Mississippi has more than 5 times as many fatal motor vehicle crashes (24.9 per 100,000 people) than Massachusetts(4.9). [Source]

TIL that Brittany, the region at the northwestern tip of France, has a Celtic culture distinct from the rest of France with their own Brythonic language. [Source]

TIL about Exploding Head Syndrome. It is a sleep disorder that causes a person to hear loud, imagined noises (explosions, bangs, screams, etc) or see light flashes before falling asleep [Source]

TIL that Australia is wider than the Moon. Australia's diameter is approximately 4,000 km, while the Moon's is only 3,474 km. [Source]

TIL that the largest class action lawsuit settlement was 206 billion dollars to be paid over 25 years. [Source]

TIL You shouldn’t rinse your mouth immediately after bushing your teeth. Fluoride strengthens tooth enamel, leaving it on the teeth for at least 15 minutes after brushing can help make the enamel more resistant to cavity-inducing acids. [Source]