20 amazing facts that you definitely didn’t know about (21 photos)

There's no shortage of interesting facts on the Internet, and here's a nice new collection from the Today I Learned community.





1. An FBI informant with a wiretapping device came to breakfast with a city official suspected of bribery. Breakfast was held in the restaurant of the Marriott Hotel at the World Trade Center.



The recording obtained during a conversation with the suspect is believed to be the only continuous audio recording of the September 11 attack.

2. Bats eat so many insects that they save the US over $1 billion a year (less crop damage, fewer pesticides needed)





3. The FBI forced Wells Fargo to rehire the whistleblower and pay him $5.4 million in damages.



4. Harambe's mother, only sibling, and two half-siblings died when a bucket of wet chlorine tablets was left near a heater. Toxic fumes entered the gorilla enclosure and killed four gorillas



5. The first McDonald's with drive-thru was made for soldiers who couldn't get out of the car in uniform.



6. The African Maasai tribe donated 14 cows to the United States after the September 11 tragedy.



7. Disney World Has the Legal Right to Build a Nuclear Power Plant in Florida Under a 1960s Law



8. United Airlines once forgot to take a blind woman off the plane, despite assuring her that they would do so.



She sat waiting for help, and then heard the plane door close: “And complete silence. I started calling, but no one answered.” She was later rescued by a repair crew.

9. The iconic photo of Einstein with his tongue hanging out was the result of his annoyed reaction to paparazzi asking for a smile on his 72nd birthday.



It became iconic mainly because Einstein himself asked for a cropped version, ordered many prints and began sending them to friends.

10. Robin Williams received an offer from Warner Brothers and accepted the role of the Joker in the 1989 film Batman.



As it turned out, the studio only did this to lure its leading candidate for the role, Jack Nicholson, into signing on, which he eventually did. Williams was furious and demanded an apology from the studio.

11. Jumping beetles run so fast they temporarily blind themselves.



Moving at speeds of up to 120 body lengths per second, their surroundings become blurry as their eyes cannot gather enough light to form an image.

12. Fire destroyed most of the Harvard Library collection in 1764. Only a small number of books have survived, including 144 that were in the hands of readers at that time



One of these books was found and returned in 1997.

13. Donald Duck has a twin sister named Della. She was first mentioned in 1937, but did not make her animation debut until 2017. She is actually the mother of Huey, Dewey and Louie



14. There are more Lebanese descendants in Brazil than people living in Lebanon



15. Batman's costume, arsenal of awesome gadgets, and secret identity weren't created by Bob Kane. He didn't even create Gotham City.



The whole thing was created by Bill Finger, who died penniless, and Kane did everything he could to suppress Finger's contribution to the character.

16. World War II Spitfires only had about 20 seconds of “firing time” before running out of ammunition, making most war scenes in movies wildly inaccurate.



17. There is no source of drinking water in Bermuda. Each house collects rainwater with white stepped roofs



18. Scientists at the Parkes Radio Observatory in Australia spent 17 years trying to identify powerful but extremely short radio bursts that appeared at seemingly random intervals.



In 2015, they finally determined the cause: premature opening of the facility's microwave.

19. Pop Rocks, Tang and Cool Whip were invented by one man, Dr. William A. Mitchell



20. In an operatic aria in The Fifth Element, composer Eric Sierra "deliberately wrote unpronounceable things" to make it sound alien.



When opera singer Inva Muls took on the role, she sang 85% of what Eric Sierra considered technically impossible, and the rest was “compiled” in the studio.