TIL that Australia has an exceptionally low adoption rate, with only 155 adoptions finalised in 2024-2025, with 119 of these being known child adoptions. This represents a 98% fall from 1971-1972. [Source]

TIL that Emperor Wenxuan of Northern Qi was an alcoholic who, when drunk, had a habit of taking off all his clothes and running around the capital naked, even in the coldest winters. He would also sometimes sleep on the streets and personally behead passersby. [Source]

TIL for six years Ann Moore, "the Fasting Woman of Tutbury," drew crowds and gifts by claiming she could live without food. In 1813 a committee put her on a bed fitted with a weighing machine to watch her for a month; she gave up after nine days and made a written confession. [Source]

TIL a-96-year old WWII veteran received a love letter from his wife 72 years after she wrote it. The letter had been hidden beneath the stairs of their old home since 1945. His wife died six years earlier so their son read the letter to him. [Source]

TIL that Taylor Swift used 34 different album variants in a single week to break Adele's record for the biggest sales week in modern music history. [Source]

TIL that in 1994, Disney offered a 13-year-old Jason Weaver $2 million to sing in ‘The Lion King.’ Jason declined. Instead, his mom negotiated and took $100K plus royalties instead. He’s still getting paid 34 years later. [Source]

TIL biomass of large predatory fish has declined worldwide by at least 90% over the past 50–100 years, according to a study published in 2005. [Source]

TIL that ancient hunter-gatherer populations consumed between 100g-150g of fiber per day, contrasting with the 15g of fiber the average American adult consumes daily. Between 90-95% of Americans fail to meet daily fiber recommendations. [Source]

TIL about the Ash Street Shootout. An intense gunfight between US Army Rangers and the Crips. [Source]

TIL chewing gum is not biodegradable because it is made from synthetic polymers and plastics [Source]

TIL that there is no record of the death of 12 Years a Slave (1853) author, Solomon Northup. There is only one account of him alive after 1857, leading to speculation he was enslaved again. Historians believe he most likely died in 1863 or 1864. [Source]

TIL Parkinson's Law is an observation written in 1955 where "work expands to fill the available time", which inspired the facetious Stock-Sanford corollary: "If you wait until the last minute, it only takes a minute to do." [Source]

TIL that the actor Hervé Villechaize, most famous for staring as Tattoo on the TV series Fantasy Island was an accomplished painter. At age 16, he entered he entered the École des Beaux-Art and by 1961, at age 18, he became the youngest artist ever to have his work displayed in the Museum of Paris. [Source]

TIL Stephen King initally threw away the first few written pages of manuscript for "Carrie" in his wastepaper basket, giving up on the project. It was his wife, Tabitha King, who fished them out of the trash, and gave it back to him, telling him that the idea was good, and he ought to go on. [Source]

TIL Alexander the Great’s mother, Olympias, had his father’s new wife and infant daughter burned alive. Years later, soldiers refused to execute Olympias so instead her victims’ families stoned her to death. [Source]

TIL that (US) generic drug names aren't created by their manufacturers, they're assigned by the United States Adopted Names (USAN) Council [Source]

TIL about Cryptic Pregnancies, which is when a pregnancy shows little to no symptoms to the point that the woman can be unaware that she is pregnant until she is in labor in some cases. [Source]

TIL that despite their name, it is biologically impossible for a centipede to be born with exactly 100 legs because a genetic quirk dictates they always have an odd number of leg pairs. [Source]

TIL that 28 people have gone the moon and only 12 of them walked on it [Source]

TIL the Austrian Empire tried to colonize islands near India in 1778 with basically 5-6 people. Things didn't go particularly well. The colonists struggled with food and water shortages, their leader Gottfried Stahl died in 1783, and the survivors eventually abandoned the settlement. [Source]

TIL Up until 1981 Boeing used depleted uranium as counter weights in parts of their 747’s [Source]