The modern automatic door may be something that we take for granted now, but it’s only in the last couple of decades that we have come to expect shops, airport, offices, gyms and other public space doors to slide open for us! The first use of doors of any…

The Hulu documentary, Batman and Bill, revealed a shocking truth. The biggest villain in Gotham isn't the Joker, or the Penguin, or the Riddler, but Batman's creator himself, Bob Kane. In the years following Batman's first

Polonium is a chemical element with the symbol Po and atomic number 84. Polonium is a chalcogen. A rare and highly radioactive metal with no stable isotopes, polonium is chemically similar to selenium and tellurium, though its metallic character resembles…

Posted in r/todayilearned by u/mattchewy43 • 149 points and 9 comments

A recent push to debunk the myth that mayonnaise is prone to spoiling has boosted its distribution at restaurants.

unidentified man who hijacked a Boeing 728 airplane in November 1971

Recreation of the evolution of the Messinian salinity crisis, between 6 and 5.3 milion years ago. Note that this is only one of the scenarios proposed by the scientific community studying this period. Time scale (million years per second) not to scale.

See…

The Battle of Waterloo was fought on Sunday, 18 June 1815, near Waterloo in the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, now in Belgium. A French army under the command of Napoleon was defeated by two of the armies of the Seventh Coalition. One was a British-led…

Find contact information and other facts about Presidents, Vice Presidents, and First Ladies, past and present.

Posted in r/todayilearned by u/ShabtaiBenOron • 102 points and 4 comments

Impending fatherhood can lower two hormones—testosterone and estradiol—for men, even before their babies are born, a new University of Michigan study found.

Snow forms when the atmospheric temperature is at or below freezing, 0/32 degrees C/F. There also needs to be a certain amount of moisture in the air for it to snow.

For centuries, music notation was an inexact technique and hasty transcriptions may have resulted in this symbol

Reminder to tiger beetles: If you chase prey at high speeds, you'll go blind. Entomologists have long noticed that tiger beetles stop-and-go in their pursuit of prey. But until now, scientists have had no idea why this type of beetle attacks its food in fits…

Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (26 October 1919 – 27 July 1980) was the Shah of Iran from 1941 to 1979. He succeeded his father Reza Shah and ruled the Imperial State of Iran until he was overthrown by the 1979 revolution led by Imam Khomeini, which abolished the…

In the world of film and animation music, “Mickey Mousing” is the affectionate (and occasionally derogatory) nickname given to a technique whereby the music and the action on the screen…

When an automobile (that runs on four or more wheels) takes a turn, the wheels on the outside (during the turn) must travel a slightly greater distance than the wheels on the inside.

Waggoner Ranch is a ranch in Texas that went up for sale in August 2014 for an asking price of $725 million and sold for an undisclosed amount.