The subreddit Today I Learned is an online community where people share all the interesting and insightful new things they learned just now.
Also, you can check our previous TIL posts here.
1. TIL: In a village in India, an Indian robin had made a nest and laid her eggs on the village’s switchboard. The village decided to go without street lights for over a month for the safety of the bird and to allow her eggs to hatch. After 45 days, the bird and its hatchlings safely flew away.
2. TIL Joseph Strauss, the engineer of the golden Gate Bridge, mandated that a net be installed under the bridge for safety while being built. This was revolutionary at the time. The net caught 19 men who fell, saving all of them from a certain death.
3. TIL of the Schiphol fly, which is a fly engraved on urinals at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport. The psychology is that men will want to “wash” the fly off the urinal so they focus more when urinating, apparently lowering cleaning bills in public bathrooms.
4. TIL that baby owls sleep down on their stomach because their heads are too heavy. They do that until they are large enough to sleep upright.
5. TIL: In order to get improvements in their job security amidst the emergence of a rival bus line, bus drivers in Okayama, Japan decided to go on strike in a unique way in 2018. While on strike, they supported the community by continuing to drive their routes, but simply not charging customers.
6. TIL: Microsoft tried a 4-day workweek in Japan as part of a “Work Life Choice Challenge” by shutting down offices every Friday. Productivity, measured by sales per employee, increased by almost 40% compared to the same period the previous year.
7. TIL that a baby elephant struck by a motorbike while crossing a road in Thailand survived after an off-duty rescue worker performed CPR on it. The man had worked in rescue for 26 years and performed dozens of CPR attempts on humans, but the elephant was the first victim he had ever managed to revive
8. TIL fish eggs can survive and hatch after passing through a duck, providing one explanation of how seemingly pristine, isolated bodies of water can become stocked with fish
