TIL Pope Leo XIV still plays Wordle and Words With Friends with his brother during their daily phone calls, a routine they kept from before his election
TIL the "Lovers' Arch," a rock arch in southern Italy, acquired a romantic reputation in the late 18th century and later drew thousands of visitors to take photos, propose marriage and celebrate romantic milestones. In 2026, after days of storms, the arch collapsed into the sea on Valentine's Day
TIL that when a predatory fish swallows a juvenile Japanese eel whole, the eel can escape by reversing up the fish's digestive tract and forcing its tail out through the gills, then pulling itself free tail first
TIL in 2023 NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft, over 15 billion miles away, began sending unreadable data. The cause was a single broken memory chip the team couldn't repair. Engineers rewrote its software, tucked the affected code into spare memory, and beamed the fix by radio, and it worked.
TIL of Hugh Herr, a top level rock climber who lost both legs to frostbite on Mount Washington. After his accident he machined his own prosthetic legs, continued climbing at a more advanced level, and later invented the world's first powered bionic ankle. He now runs a bionics research group at MIT.
TIL the oldest organ donor in US history was Dale Steele, a 100 year old World War II veteran who died in 2026. After he died, his liver was successfully transplanted into a patient who was able to go home just five days after the operation
TIL Before becoming an actor, Cillian Murphy played rhythm guitar in an acid jazz band called The Sons of Mr. Green Genes, named after a Frank Zappa song. When he was 18 or 19 the band was offered a record deal but it didn't work out, and in his words that was "the end of the dream".
TIL reggae singer Shaggy, known for "Boombastic", developed his signature singing voice as a US Marine by mimicking his drill instructors. He sang his first hit "Oh Carolina" in that voice because he thought it sounded cool, and when it blew up he realized he'd have to sing every song that way
TIL many languages have their own bizarre idioms for heavy rain equivalent to "it's raining cats and dogs." In Cantonese, heavy rain is "raining dog poo", in Welsh it's "raining old ladies and sticks", and one Albanian expression for it translates to "God is taking a piss."