Yar me maties, today I found out what be causing scurvy. Like most people, I already knew that scurvy is caused by a lack of vitamin C and that it was a major problem aboard ships out to sea for a good length of time and is still somewhat of a problem in places where people are malnourished. But I […]
Read moreToday I Found Out was started almost exactly one year ago on January 1st, 2010. This year the site has been viewed by over four million people worldwide with the best month of the year coming this month, in December, receiving over 1.3 million page views from over 800,000 visitors. There are now about 270 articles on Today I Found […]
Read moreTop Five Most Visited Articles in December: 1. How the Gun on the Original Duck Hunt Game Worked [Dec. Visitors: 114,972 | Posted On Dec. 28, 2010] 2. The Tongue Doesn’t Have Zones for Different Tastes [Dec. Visitors: 50,894 | Posted On May 11, 2010] 3. What the Things You See When You Rub Your Eyes Are Called [Dec. Visitors: […]
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“That’s what she said” is thought to have been around since the 1970s with the earliest known documented case of the phrase showing up on Saturday Night Live, spoken by Chevy Chase in a weekend update skit in 1975, which also happened to be the first season of SNL. “That’s what she said” was later hugely popularized thanks to Wayne’s […]
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Today I found out the origins of the word “Algebra”. It all started back around 825 AD when a man named Abū ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī, the “father” of Algebra, wrote a book called “Kitab al-jabr wa al-muqabalah”. This roughly translates to “Rules of Reintegration and Reduction”. This work was specifically covering the branch of mathematics we now know […]
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Today I found out the actor who played Uncle Phil in Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was also the voice of Shredder in the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle cartoon series. *mind blown* Bonus Factoids: Uncle Phil, also occasionally known as James Avery in the real world, was also the voice of James Rhodes in the 1990s Iron Man series. After […]
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Today I found out how the gun on the original Duck Hunt game worked. If you’ve ever played Duck Hunt or any of the other NES games that used the NES Zapper gun, you probably at one point or another wondered how the game actually knows where on the TV you are aiming the gun when you pulled the trigger. […]
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Today I found out what SOS stands for. It is commonly held that “SOS” is an acronym for “Save Our Ship” and thus often written “S.O.S.” In truth, SOS is not an acronym for anything, which is why it is incorrect to put full stops between each letter. So why was SOS chosen to signify a distress signal? The thought […]
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Today I found out why asparagus makes pee smell. The smell comes from the way certain chemical compounds in asparagus break down inside people’s bodies. This is why cooking asparagus in various ways does not result in the same smelly byproduct; the specific digestive enzymes that break down the compounds in the asparagus to produce the smell aren’t present until […]
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Today I found out that the “Pull and Pray” method statistically is just about as effective as condoms for preventing pregnancy. Indeed, according to Dr. John Guillebaud in his book Contraception: Your Questions Answered, some of the lowest birth rates in history pop up around cultures whose primary method of contraception is the pull and pray method. This method, also […]
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Kentucky Fried Chicken is hardly considered a suitable place to get one’s food for a traditional Christmas meal in most parts of the world. There is one exception, though. In Japan, it is a Christmas tradition to order KFC. So how exactly did Christmas, the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, become synonymous with a bucket of fried chicken […]
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Today I found out why golf balls have dimples. It turns out, somewhat counter intuitively, those dimples significantly decrease the drag on the golf ball as it flies through the air, compared to a smooth ball. Not only that, but they also increases the lift somewhat. These two things combined can make the golf ball go as much as three […]
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Myth: Duck’s quacks and wolf’s howls don’t echo. First, it was commonly held that a duck’s quack didn’t echo. The earliest place I could find where this myth was debunked was by Cecil Adams of the Straight Dope in 1998. In his experiment, he and a few others took a duck to a place where it was easy to produce […]
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Note: This is a guest article contributed by frequent TIFO visitor and owner of DumpADay, Jon. Today I found out that it is possible for a person to briefly remain conscious after being beheaded. When I first started to research this topic, I found it hard to believe. However, after sifting through numerous reputable sources saying that the beheaded person […]
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Note: This is a guest article contributed by frequent TIFO visitor and owner of StevenHumour.com, Steven. Today I found out what the eight juices are in V8 vegetable juice. The included juices in the original V8 100% vegetable juice come from tomatoes, carrots, celery, beets, parsley, lettuce, watercress, and spinach. The dominate juice in this mixture is tomato juice comprising […]
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Today I found out why paper cuts hurt so much. The generally accepted reason paper cuts are so painful primarily lies in the fact that you usually get them on your fingers, particularly your fingertips. Fingertips and hands have significantly more nociceptors (nerve fibers) per square millimeter than most of the rest of your body, such as your legs, arms, […]
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Today I found out how many licks it takes to get to the center of a tootsie roll tootsie pop. Obviously this depends somewhat on a variety of factors such as the size of the person’s tongue; whether they concentrate the licking on just one side; how hard they press with their tongue; amount of saliva; etc. In any event, […]
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Myth: Al Gore said he invented the internet. One of the things Al Gore gets made fun of most often in popular media tends to be the misconception that he at one point supposedly said he invented the internet. Now, all politics aside, whether you hate/mildly dislike/like/love/are indifferent to Al Gore, he doesn’t really deserve to be made fun of […]
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