Today I Learned (TIL)

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/afeeney on 2025-08-11 17:12:50+00:00.

Original Title: TIL that Yale graduate, champion golfer, and industrialist Eben Byers died of cancer after drinking 1,400 bottles of Radiathor, radioactive water sold as medicine. He had to be buried in a lead-lined coffin because of the high levels of radiation in his body (https://spark.iop.org/byers-lead-coffin)

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/pocketbutter on 2025-08-11 16:32:50+00:00.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/tyrion2024 on 2025-08-11 14:24:13+00:00.

Original Title: TIL the 'personal injury lawsuit' evolved from a rare sight to a common occurrence during the Second Industrial Revolution at the end of the 19th century. In 1870, tort lawsuits made up only 4.2% of the contested caseload of New York City trial courts, but by 1910, that number had increased to 40.9%

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/tyrion2024 on 2025-08-11 14:20:56+00:00.

Original Title: TIL a man discovered a trick for predicting winning tickets of a Canadian Tic-Tac-Toe scratch-off game with 90% accuracy. However, after he determined that using it would be less profitable (and less enjoyable) than his consulting job as a statistician, he instead told the gaming commission about it

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/0khalek0 on 2025-08-11 13:38:10+00:00.

Original Title: TIL about Ibn al-Haytham, a 10th-century scientist who changed how we understand the science of vision. He once pretended to be insane to escape execution and used his house arrest to write important works on optics.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/StrikingMango62 on 2025-08-11 12:32:48+00:00.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/zahrul3 on 2025-08-11 11:42:38+00:00.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/altrightobserver on 2025-08-11 03:26:33+00:00.

Original Title: TIL that the Beatles were almost banned from the Philippines after rejecting a breakfast invitation from the country’s First Lady. They were then subsequently attacked by a violent mob in the streets of Manila, who beat up their roadies and PR manager

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/StrikingMango62 on 2025-08-11 11:04:48+00:00.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/flamingoooz on 2025-08-11 10:04:07+00:00.

Original Title: TIL The National Sleep Foundation recommends 8–10 hours of sleep for teens, but its 2024 Sleep in America Poll found that less than 2 in 10 U.S. teens reported getting that amount, and teens who started school before 8:30am had higher levels of depressive symptoms than those who started later.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/duga404 on 2025-08-11 05:13:26+00:00.

Original Title: TIL that Uzbekistan has the 6th largest Korean population outside of Korea (~174,000), mainly due to mass deportations of ethnic Koreans (among others) in the USSR to Central Asia in the 1930s (during which up to 25% died).

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/SirDunny on 2025-08-11 04:27:52+00:00.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/tyrion2024 on 2025-08-11 06:38:34+00:00.

Original Title: TIL in 2010 a 12-year-old girl was arrested in her NY junior high school after she reportedly doodled the words "I love my friends Abby and Faith" in erasable marker on her desk. She was handcuffed and taken to the local precinct, where she was locked in a room for two hours before being released.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/tyrion2024 on 2025-08-11 05:08:38+00:00.

Original Title: TIL the Burger King commercial starring a 5-yr-old Sarah Michelle Gellar was the first to say a competitor by name when she says, "McDonald's makes their burgers with 20% less meat than Burger King. Unbelievable!" She also wasn't allowed to eat at McD's after she was named in its lawsuit against BK.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/dcoughl02 on 2025-08-11 03:57:22+00:00.

Original Title: TIL about a woman named Flo Hyman (actual name) who was very tall through her life and worked to become an ‘84 Olympic medalist in women’s volleyball. Later in life, she collapsed and died on the court at the age of 31, and was determined to have been undiagnosed of Marfan Syndrome.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/naturallin on 2025-08-11 03:36:06+00:00.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/South_Gas626 on 2025-08-11 03:27:57+00:00.

Original Title: TIL In 1961, after voice actor Mel Blanc was in a severe car accident, he was in a coma and wouldn’t speak. Doctors eventually tried asking about his characters. When asked how Bugs Bunny was, he said, “Eh, just fine Doc.” Asked about Tweety, he replied, “I tawt I taw a puddy tat.”

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/Giff95 on 2025-08-11 02:53:28+00:00.

Original Title: TIL John Williams used an identical music cue in "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" and "Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones," as he composed them around the same time and both films were released in 2002

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/OutrageousTerm7140 on 2025-08-11 03:00:13+00:00.

Original Title: TIL actor Benedict Cumberbatch once stopped his Uber near Baker Street when he saw a cyclist being attacked by four men trying to steal his bike. He jumped out, physically pulled the assailants off the cyclist, and shouted at them until they fled. The cyclist was unharmed.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/Outside_Reserve_2407 on 2025-08-11 00:40:11+00:00.

Original Title: TIL Henry Ford's revolutionary assembly line for the Model T was inspired in part by the "disassembly lines" of the Chicago meat packing industry, where animal carcasses moved along a conveyor belt and workers at stations specialized in taking off one part of the animal

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/ansyhrrian on 2025-08-11 00:16:22+00:00.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/Ravens55 on 2025-08-11 00:06:58+00:00.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/Princess_Of_Thieves on 2025-08-10 22:49:48+00:00.

Original Title: TIL of Shridhar Chillal, a man who didn't cut his nails for 66 years. From age 16, he let his left hands nails grow as a challenge. They eventually reached a total length of 909.6cm before, in 2018, he had them cut. He earned the Guinness World Record for "Longest fingernails on a single hand ever"​

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/Morella1989 on 2025-08-10 23:01:02+00:00.

Original Title: TIL Shige Sakakura was a Japanese baby farmer and serial killer who, together with her accomplices Tsuta Oki and Naka Ikai, murdered around 200 infants between 1898 and 1913. Their crimes were uncovered when a geisha was denied access to her child and reported them. All three were hanged in 1915.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/Ultach on 2025-08-10 22:15:22+00:00.