11.
TIL about the 71 teenage students, who were stationed to protect a South Korean HQ, despite having no experience in war or even firing a gun. The SK army didn’t think the NK army would attack that HQ, but they did. Those students, still in their school uniforms, held back the NK army for 11 hours
12.
TIL research found that 94% of British people said they had conversed about the weather in the past six hours, and 38% said they had in the past 60 minutes. This means at any moment in the UK, a third of the population is either talking about the weather, has already done so or are about to do so
13.
TIL astronauts need to sleep near air vents or risk carbon dioxide from their own lungs forming a bubble around their head due to weightlessness
14.
TIL after an earthquake shattered the Colossi of Memnon in Egypt, the damaged statue began to “sing” during sunrise which modern scientists attribute to early morning heat causing dew trapped within the statue’s crack to evaporate creating vibrations that echoed through the desert air.
15.
TIL Kodak uncovered the first atomic bomb test when customers began complaining about black spots on their photos
16.
TIL Los Angeles is the first major city in the world to synchronize all its traffic lights. Nearly 4,400 lights across 469 miles receive real-time updates about traffic flow to make second-by-second adjustments. The system limits congestion by up to 16% while also dramatically reducing idling time
17.
TIL Lisa Leslie as a high school basketball player scored 101 points in 16 minutes of play. She shot 37 of 56 from the floor and 27 of 35 from the line. However, she did not break the record for women’s points in a high school game because the other team’s coach refused to play the second half
18.
TIL that from 2003 to 2005, a 13-year-old girl wrote a 365k word Harry Potter fanfiction while in the hospital receiving cancer treatment. She passed away just six days after completing it, and her father used her notes to write the second book in the series
19.
TIL about fossil words, words that have largely fallen out of common use but still survive in idioms. Examples include “fro” (as in to and fro) and “lo” as in (lo and behold)
20.
TIL The Lion King Game (SEGA/SNES) was made extremely difficult on purpose. Disney told the developers to make the game so difficult that people wouldn’t be able to beat it during a rental period at Blockbuster. A few developers would later apologize to fans for how hard the game is
