Til that the designer of the SS rune symbol was only paid about $2 for his design. [source, comments]

TIL there's something called the National Diaper Bank which coordinates and facilitates donations of diapers to families in need. 1 in 2 US families cannot afford enough diapers to keep their infant or child clean, dry, and healthy. [source, comments]

TIL that Spain currently has a lower fertility rate than Japan [source, comments]

TIL in 2009 Burger King ran the "Whopper sacrifice" campaign, which gave a free whopper to anyone who deleted 10 friends on Facebook. Facebook suspended the program because Burger King was alerting people letting them know they'd been dropped for a sandwich. [source, comments]

TIL the common plastic garden chair is called a "Monobloc" chair, and was once banned in Switzerland for polluting the cityscape. [source, comments]

TIL only larger ships in the US Navy have a Captain, smaller frigates etc. have Commanders [source, comments]

TIL that despite repeated attempts to uncover one, there was not a single documented instance of an anti-Vietnam War protester spitting on a returning soldier [source, comments]

TIL humans are the "most sensitive" to the castor oil seeds: it takes 1 to kill a full grown human, 11 to kill a dog, and a massive dose of 80 to kill a duck. The seeds contain ricin which is roughly 6000 times more poisonous than cyanide. [source, comments]

TIL the Dutch word "Swaffelen" (meaning to hit an object or person with one's penis, often repeatedly) won 2008 word of the year in the Netherlands and Belgium. [source, comments]

TIL Metallica released a video in 2012 appealing for help to solve the 2009 murder of a 20yo fan, Morgan Harrington, who disappeared after their show. They offered $50K on top of the $100K by police. [source, comments]

TIL the average penis size has increased by 24% over the past 29 years [source, comments]

TIL that most people can see their own white blood cells moving through their retinas [source, comments]

TIL that Apple designs and tests its product boxes so that they open at just the right speed [source, comments]

TIL a young Thomas Edison helped another inventor, Samuel Laws, design telegraph machines. He expected to be paid a few hundred dollars but Laws instead gave $40,000, which allowed Edison to afford a new research laboratory and factory. There, he amassed 300 employees and developed 50 inventions. [source, comments]

TIL The US National Solar Observatory requires a swimming pool’s worth of ice to be added each night into its tanks so coolant can be distributed through the observatory. The heat is intense enough to rapidly melt metal at the telescope mirror’s focal point [source, comments]

TIL Pablo Escobar's Medellin drug cartel wrote off 10% of their money annually due to soilage because it would lie untouched for so long that rats would eat it or it would become water damaged. [source, comments]

TIL that Model T production reached almost 10,000 cars a day in 1925 [source, comments]

TIL that the Sam Kee Building, recognized by Guinness World Records as the world's narrowest commercial building, was built after its owner bet a business associate that he could make use of the 6 ft (1.5 m) wide strip of land he had left after the city took 79% of his land without compensating him. [source, comments]

TIL homicide clearance rates in the US declined from a peak of 93% in 1962 to 64% in 1994. The rate then plateaued (with some variation) for the next 25 years. There is currently no satisfactory explanation for either the initial decline or why it ended when it did. [source, comments]

TIL a 2022 survey of 3,000 adults & children found that just 27% of children (ages 6-16) said they regularly play outside their homes, whereas, 71% of the baby boomer generation said they did when they were children (80% for those ages 55-64). [source, comments]

TIL Silphium is an unidentified/extinct plant - the exact identity is unclear, highly debated - that was used as a contraceptive and an abortifacient by ancient Greeks and Romans. The plant was also used as seasoning, medicine, perfume, aphrodisiac. [source, comments]