40 interesting and surprising facts from the Reddit community "Today I found out"

It's never too late to learn something new! And thanks to the Reddit community "Today I found out" it can be done easily and naturally. On this Internet platform, the most interesting and amazing facts from various areas of our life are collected. The group has more than 27 million members and an infinite number of amazing stories.

In 2010, Felix Loch, a gold medalist in luge in Vancouver, melted his medal into 2 discs and presented one to the parents of an athlete who died during a training run on the day of the opening ceremony.

In 1889, American journalist Nellie Bly tried to recreate the route from the famous novel "Around the World in 80 Days". She not only completed this round-the-world trip, but also completed it eight days before the deadline. Nellie Bly visited England, France, where she met with Jules Verne, Italy, the Suez Canal, Ceylon, Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan.

Martin Luther King Jr. was a big fan of the Star Trek series. He liked that this sci-fi series showed a future in which people of all skin colors worked together in harmony. One day he met a black actress, Nichelle Nichols, who played a character named Nyota Uhura in the series. She told him she wanted to leave the show, but he convinced her not to, saying she was a role model.

Japanese astronomer Hisako Koyama has been painting sunspots every day for over 40 years. Her detailed sketches help researchers in the study of solar cycles and magnetic fields of the Sun.

Since Brazil could not afford to send a team to the 1932 Olympics, they sent the athletes on a merchant ship carrying coffee. Athletes sold coffee along the way to finance their journey.

A priceless mosaic belonging to the Roman emperor Caligula, which was destroyed by the Nazis, served as a coffee table in a New York apartment for 50 years.

Emerson Romero was a deaf silent film actor. When films with sound were invented, deaf actors got fewer roles, and the text in the credits was removed. This led to the fact that in 1947 he began making subtitles for films so that films would still be available to deaf people.

To save Hawaiian culture and people from extinction, Kalakaua, the last king of the Hawaiian kingdom, went on a world tour in 1881, visited Asia, the Middle East, Europe and In the United States, and became the first reigning monarch to circumnavigate the world.

In 1902, the Great Hanoi Rat Massacre took place. The French wanted to eliminate rats from the sewer system. They set a reward for every dead rat tail. Thousands of tails were surrendered a day, but the problem with rats only worsened. Later it turned out that rat hunters specifically breed rodents in order to earn more on the delivery of tails.

In 1604, King James I of England wrote a treatise "Retaliatory blow to tobacco", in which he described smoking as "a habit disgusting to the eyes, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain and dangerous to the lungs."

In the US state of Mississippi, the sale of children was not banned until 2009. She was banned after a woman tried to sell her granddaughter for $2,000 and a car, and it was discovered that there was no law under which she could be punished.

In the 1950s, a psychiatrist had three patients with paranoid schizophrenia, and each of the three considered himself Jesus Christ. The doctor gathered them together in one room to see if their beliefs would change after encountering each other. They did not change their beliefs, but each individually came to the conclusion that the other two men had gone mad. The film "Three Christos" was made about this.

Black panthers are not a separately existing species. These are jaguars and leopards with melanism, a genetic disorder that causes them to have completely black skin. Like albinism, only the opposite.

The actor who played Tarzan and Olympic swimmer Johnny Weissmuller, along with his brother, were swimming in Lake Michigan and saw how the boat capsized. They pulled at least 14 people out of the water, 11 of them survived.

Paul McCartney is the only artist to reach the top of the UK charts as a solo artist, as well as a performer as part of a duo, trio, quartet, quintet and musical ensemble.

In the 1980s, the last 29 Guam kingfishers were caught to help save this species from complete extinction caused by imported brown tree snakes. Thanks to the dedicated efforts of zoos, there are currently 140 individuals in the world, and in the future the species is planned to be returned to the wild.

In 2020, Colombians sent 130 grams of cocaine inside hollowed-out coffee beans to Italy. They were caught when a customs officer noticed that the "sender" had the same name as the mafia boss in John Wick.

Brendan Fraser is the first American-born actor to be included in the Canadian Walk of Fame.

During World War II, British spies planned to add estrogen to Hitler's food to make him less aggressive.

Unlike most animals, goats are able to remember where objects are hidden without being able to see or smell them.

One day Charles Darwin was sent flower samples, and he noticed that one flower was very long, and bet that there was some special butterfly with a very long proboscis for pollination. A few years later, this butterfly was discovered.

Ethiopia has a unique calendar that lags behind the rest of the world by 7-8 years. The current year in Ethiopia is 2014.

Dolphins come together to form mega-flocks, which can consist of more than 10,000 individuals.

An adult cat can jump to a height of 5-8 times its height. It's as if a person could jump from the ground to the 3rd or 4th floor.

Legendary Canadian hockey player Wayne Gretzky was so ahead of other players according to statistics that even if all his career indicators were cut in half, he would still remain one of the 20 best players of all time.

On average, 2 amputations occur weekly at meat processing plants in the USA.

Migraine in women is 3 times more common than in men.

The unique sound of London's Big Ben is due to the fact that the bell cracked in 1859, just two months after its opening. The bell is oriented in such a way that the hammer does not fall into the "crack".

There are vulture bees that, instead of collecting nectar, collect flesh from rotting carcasses and produce a "rot-resistant edible glucose product resembling honey," also known as meat honey.

There are two heads of state in San Marino at once (dual power). The heads of State, called "captains Regents", are elected for a six-month term. They currently have the youngest head of state in the world at the age of 27, and they have had more female heads of state than any other country (18).

In Wisconsin, children are legally allowed to drink alcohol in bars and restaurants or at home if they are with a parent or guardian.

For the nuclear bombing of Japan by America, the consent of Great Britain was required (because of the nuclear research treaty during World War II).

Mango and cashew belong to the family of poisonous ivy.

The Ohio Correctional Facility, known for the movie "Shawshank Escape," was planned to be demolished after filming. However, it became a tourist attraction, and later a group of enthusiasts bought this place from the state for one dollar.

There was a traveling "preacher" in the USA, George Hensley, who spread religious ideas about the divine healing power of snake bites. George died in 1955 as a result of a snake bite, and the state of Kentucky subsequently passed laws prohibiting the use of snakes for religious purposes.

Thomas Edison was so upset by his son's business ineptitude that he paid him $35 a week to use a different name.

There is a Polish soup called "chernina", which is made from duck blood and other ingredients. Traditionally, this soup was served to men who made an offer and were refused.

The work of Charles Drew, a pioneer in the field of blood preservation, led to the large-scale use of blood banks, blood donation in the United States to the British during World War II, and the use of transfusion machines. He resigned as head of the first blood bank of the American Red Cross because of the policy of separating the blood of blacks and whites.

Until the mid-1990s, the Italian-American mafia controlled garbage collection in By setting prices, extorting or killing competitors, or forcing them to join a price-fixing cartel. After they managed to "squeeze" them and put them in jail, the cost of garbage collection decreased by $ 600 million.

French schools assigned "Le Symbole" to children caught using a minority language (for example, Breton, Occitan, Basque, etc.). The only way to get rid of the "symbol" is to rat on a classmate. At the end of the day, the students marked with symbols received some kind of punishment.