Today I Learned (TIL)

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/radioactivetampon21 on 2025-07-07 22:07:26+00:00.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/waitingforthesun92 on 2025-07-07 22:07:12+00:00.

Original Title: TIL when the Barilla pasta company introduced a spring-form pasta in the 1970s, it was named “cellentani” in honour of Italian singer Adriano Celentano, whose nickname is “the springy one.” As Barilla trademarked the name, other companies called the shape “cavatappi”

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/IanGecko on 2025-07-07 21:33:10+00:00.

Original Title: TIL the difference between Putt-Putt and mini golf: Putt-Putt courses have basic, minimalist designs with a strict par 2 on each hole. Mini golf courses are more tricky and elaborate, so the holes have pars up to 6.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/schwenger on 2025-07-07 20:32:27+00:00.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/PixelWitch12 on 2025-07-07 19:57:46+00:00.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/DangerNoodle1993 on 2025-07-07 19:36:10+00:00.

Original Title: TIL that Ryan Gosling was fired from The Lovely Bones after gaining 60 pounds for the role by drinking melted Häagen-Dazs ice cream. He had envisioned the character as overweight, but the director disagreed, leading to his dismissal.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/Physical_Hamster_118 on 2025-07-07 19:12:10+00:00.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/MichiganCarNut on 2025-07-07 17:37:12+00:00.

Original Title: TIL the owner of the WTC argued that the 9-11 attacks were 2 separate occurrences, and so therefore based on the contract terms, he deserved twice the insurance payout - the courts partially agreed and 9 of the 20 insurers had to pay double

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/backrowejoe on 2025-07-07 16:33:33+00:00.

Original Title: TIL Céline Dion, along with her husband, filed a $5 million defamation lawsuit against the Quebec tabloid Allô Vedettes, which claimed that the couple paid $5,001 to rent the swimming pool of Caesars Palace in Las Vegas so that Dion could sunbathe topless and Angélil could go skinny dipping.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/GoCartMozart1980 on 2025-07-07 15:41:18+00:00.

Original Title: TIL about Arthur MacArthur, Sr., who served as interim governor of Wisconsin for five days in 1855 after his predecessor resigned when he was caught trying to brazenly steal the 1855 gubernatorial election.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/DangerNoodle1993 on 2025-07-07 15:55:08+00:00.

Original Title: TIL that the first journalist to report the outbreak of the Second World War was a rookie British reporter on her very first week on the job. While travelling along the German–Polish border, she spotted thousands of troops, tanks, and artillery massed for invasion.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/my-blood on 2025-07-07 14:39:31+00:00.

Original Title: TIL about "Heaven Lake", a caldera (collapsed magma chamber after a volcanic explosion), which is said to be home to the "Lake Tianchi Monster", akin to the Loch Ness Monster, and also the birth place of Kim-Jong-Il.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/SignalHD18 on 2025-07-07 15:16:10+00:00.

Original Title: TIL that natural gas is actually odorless, and the smell we associate with it was invented in the 1970s by British engineer Peter Hansen. He was asked to create the "nastiest smell" possible so people could detect gas leaks.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/Low_Plenty2555 on 2025-07-07 15:00:47+00:00.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/brazzy42 on 2025-07-07 13:24:35+00:00.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/n_mcrae_1982 on 2025-07-07 13:11:49+00:00.

Original Title: TIL Marco Polo's father and uncle, Niccolò and Maffeo Polo, preceded him in China and meeting Kublai Khan by several years. Because of this early voyage, Marco did not meet his father or uncle until he was fifteen years old.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/NoDontClickOnThat on 2025-07-07 12:54:02+00:00.

Original Title: TIL that in 1859, a geomagnetic storm from a huge solar flare hit the Earth and auroras were visible around the globe. Telegraph systems in Europe and North America failed. Some telegraph equipment operated for over an hour without needing external electrical power.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/OkFarm2938 on 2025-07-07 11:31:56+00:00.

Original Title: TIL Sharks are Older than Trees. The first organisms we’d recognize as trees (the extinct genus Archaeopteris) didn’t appear until roughly 350 million years ago, at least 50–100 million years after sharks were already cruising the oceans.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/Deputy_Chief_Lyman on 2025-07-07 11:38:38+00:00.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/zahrul3 on 2025-07-07 11:11:08+00:00.

Original Title: TIL that Sweden recently moved the entire mining town of Kiruna a few miles east, because the local iron mine started encroaching under the town. All historic buildings were moved, piece by piece, to their new locations.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/backrowejoe on 2025-07-07 11:01:23+00:00.

Original Title: TIL Alexander Fleming on discovering penicillin was quoted as saying: “When I woke up just after dawn on September 28, 1928, I certainly didn’t plan to revolutionise all medicine by discovering the world’s first antibiotic, or bacteria killer. But I suppose that was exactly what I did.”

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/Icetraxs on 2025-07-07 10:06:00+00:00.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/30InchSpare on 2025-07-07 09:47:21+00:00.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/AyaanGaming27 on 2025-07-07 09:41:03+00:00.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/Prior-Student4664 on 2025-07-07 05:41:22+00:00.

Original Title: TIL In 1993 Russia launched an orbital mirror called Znamya-2 that successfully reflected sunlight onto Earth at night, creating a bright spot approximately 5 kilometers wide moving across Europe at orbital speed. It was the first experiment in a program aimed at illuminating cities during nighttime