This is a weekly wrap of our Daily Knowledge Newsletter. You can get that newsletter for free here. Why Multivitamins Make Your Urine Bright Yellow If you’ve ever taken a daily multivitamin you too might have noticed your urine turning a bright yellow-ish color. Take your vitamins and eat some asparagus and you might just think you’re dying the next […]
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How Our Galaxy Came to Be Called the “Milky Way” and What It’s Called in Other Languages No, it has nothing to do with the candy bar. Like many words we use today, the English name of our galaxy is derived from its Latin name: Via Lactea. Translated, that means “the road of milk.” The Romans actually got the name […]
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Because we’re now covering a lot more daily topics here on Today I Found Out, and because I had a bunch of my Daily Knowledge Newsletter subscribers request something like this via email (the newsletter is free, by the way and you can subscribe here ;-)), I thought I’d start doing a “Weekly Wrap” which will more or less be […]
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So a new book was just put out for pre-sale by Dan Lewis, the man behind the Webby Award winning Now I Know newsletter and someone who occasionally lets me re-publish some of his awesome articles here on Today I Found Out, such as this one. So I thought I’d recommend it here. Dan is a phenomenal writer and is […]
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Today I found out it’s only been very recently that people in the U.S. started using toilet paper. Despite toilet paper having been around since at least the 6th century AD (initially in China), it wouldn’t be until the late 19th century when toilet paper would be first introduced in America and England and it wasn’t until the 1900s, around […]
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Today I found out the creator of the Nike “swoosh” logo was originally only paid $35 for it. The woman is Carolyn Davidson. At the time she created the now world famous logo, Davidson was a student at Portland State University where one of the co-founders of Nike, Phil Knight, was teaching as an assistant professor in accounting. On the […]
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Today I found out dogs and cats are typically right pawed or left pawed. This is according to two studies, one done at the Ataturk University in Turkey (in 1991) and another at the University of Manchester in England (in 2006). According to the Ataturk University study, the majority of domestic cats are right pawed (50%), 10% of them are […]
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We’ve just launched a new Pinterest page for Today I Found Out, where we’ll be posting various picture quick facts and infographics for your reading pleasure, some from our site and some from elsewhere. So if you’re on Pinterest and are interested, please follow us here. We’ve also just added the ability for you to simply hover the mouse over […]
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Today I Found Out has teamed up with Jeremiah Warren to show his awesome “trivia” related videos here. You can subscribe to Warren’s YouTube Channel here. If you like this video and the Bonus Mother’s Day Facts below, you might also enjoy: The Woman Who Carried a Fetus in Her Body for Over 60 years The Record for the Most […]
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This Day In History, April 26, 1986: On this day in history, 1986, the worst nuclear power accident in history occurred in the Ukraine at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. While many use Chernobyl as a reason why we should abandon nuclear power, the Chernobyl accident wasn’t so much about the inherent danger of nuclear reactors, even given the technology […]
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Kevin asks: Why do we call the stock market trends “bullish” and “bearish”? For those who don’t know, a “bear” market, or when someone is being “bearish” in this context, is marked by investors being very conservative and pessimistic, resulting in a declining market generally marked by the mass selling off of stock. A “bull” market is simply the opposite […]
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Myth: Jackie Robinson was the first African American to play in the Major Leagues The great Jackie Robinson accomplished an amazing amount in his lifetime both on and off the field. Despite all the adversity and pressure he experienced, he somehow managed to put up legitimate Hall of Fame numbers doing what is often described as the hardest thing in […]
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Today I Found Out has teamed up with Jeremiah Warren to show his awesome “trivia” related videos here. You can subscribe to Warren’s YouTube Channel here. Bonus April Fools’ Day Facts: The oldest known “April Fools’ Day” type tradition, Sizdah Bedar, can be found in Iran and has been going on since around 500 BC. The event is simply a […]
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This Day In History: March 29, 1886 On this day in history, 1886, Dr. John Pemberton mixed the first batch of what would soon become Coca-Cola. Pemberton was a pharmacist and also a former Confederate soldier who was wounded in the Battle of Columbus. This subsequently led to him becoming addicted to morphine, as happened to many people at the […]
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One of our authors (pictured on the right), Firefighter/Paramedic Scott Hiskey (who writes most of the medical-related articles you read on Today I Found Out), every year participates in the coincidentally named Scott Firefighter Stairclimb, where more than 1500 firefighters race up Seattle’s tallest building in full firefighter gear (including their heavily thermally insulated suits and air masks that due […]
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This Day In History: March 13, 1962 On this day in history, 1962, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Lyman Lemnitzer, submitted a proposal to the Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, developed by the Joint Chiefs and the Department of Defense, outlining plans to commit various acts of terrorism on U.S. soil and then to frame the […]
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I recently put out a job listing for some new writers to add to the team here on Today I Found Out. I received well over 300 applicants, with a shockingly high percentage of them being amazingly good. After going through all the applications a few times, I managed to narrow the list down to the top 10% and gave […]
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