TIL that the highly rated Simpsons Treehouse of Horror V segment The Shinning, was the work of showrunner David Mirkin. Matt Groening himself had never watched The Shining and didn’t understand most of the references. [source, comments]

TIL that in 1821 Scotsman Gregor MacGregor arrived in London as the "Cazique" of the Central American nation of Poyais. He secured a £200,000 loan underwritten by the revenues of Poyais and convinced 250 people to buy land and settle in Poyais. Poyais did not exist. [source, comments]

TIL McDonald's Grimace is a tastebud [source, comments]

TIL that women tend to bruise more easily because their skin has more fat and less collagen. Collagen supports blood vessels, making them less prone to breaking. Men's thicker collagen layer provides better protection for their blood vessels. [source, comments]

TIL that a man died in the lighthouse he built. Henry Winstanley was so confident in the lighthouse's design that he wished to be inside during "the greatest storm there ever was". The lighthouse was completely destroyed in the Great Storm of 1703, killing Winstanley. [source, comments]

TIL Big Cats coexist with humans in only two major metropolitan regions in the world - Mumbai and Los Angeles [source, comments]

TIL that between 1890 and 2011, it’s estimated that 1,604 boxers died as a direct result of injuries sustained in the ring. That is an average of 13 deaths a year. [source, comments]

TIL several languages, including widely-spoken ones like Farsi, Tagalog and even spoken Mandarin, do not have gendered pronouns (e.g. he or she) [source, comments]

TIL that a high school has its own train station. Only four trains a day stop at Caltrain's College Park station in San Jose, California, near Bellarmine Prep school. Caltrain would like to close the station, but students and parents say that it is very busy during the stops. [source, comments]

TIL Partway through the hour-long trial of former Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife Elena, their lawyers abandoned their defense and sided with the prosecutors. Afterwards, their execution by firing squad happened so quickly that the TV crew was unable to film the execution in full. [source, comments]

TIL that in 1910 English pranksters disguised as Ethiopian diplomats fooled the Royal Navy into giving them a tour of HMS Dreadnought. They spoke a gibberish of mostly Greek and Latin and would shout "Bunga bunga!" to express astonishment. One of them was author Virginia Woolf. [source, comments]

TIL that Egyptian builders such as those of the pyramids were usually not slaves, and frequently took sick days from work. Popular excuses included “stung by scorpion”, “bleeding wife”, “trouble with eye”, and even “brewing beer”. [source, comments]

TIL about Hachiko. The dog who went to the train station everyday for 9 Years, 9 months, and 15 days to wait for his owner's return. [source, comments]

TIL that telegraph operators fell in love, got married, and even had sexual encounters over the telegraph, much in the same way people do today through messaging and social networks [source, comments]

TIL that the ruby-throated hummingbird flies non-stop across the Gulf of Mexico as part of its spring migration and has a VO2 max that is about 10 times higher than elite human athletes. [source, comments]

TIL that US troops using flash card apps accidentally revealed classified information about nuclear weapons in Europe, such as vault locations, surveillance camera positions, signs/countersigns, and duress words. [source, comments]

TIL: Elephants have the longest gestation period for a mammal (Asian elephants: 18-22 months, African bush elephants: 22 months) and won’t give birth for another 4-years. [source, comments]

TIL that female cicadas have metal ovipositors so that they can drill the tree bark to lay eggs. The only animal with an organ that is mostly made out of transition metals. [source, comments]

TIL New evidence suggests that crusaders rode horses that were the size of modern ponies. [source, comments]

TIL Edmund Hillary (first person to summit Mt Everest) was scheduled to serve as a guide for a flight over Antarctica on Air New Zealand Flight 901, but canceled to instead embark on a US speaking tour. Flight 901 ended up crashing into Mt Erebus, killing all onboard. [source, comments]

TIL that each color in a roll of Smarties candy has its own flavor, and that green is strawberry [source, comments]