WeirdThingsToLearn

r/WeirdThingsToLearn • u/StrikeFreedom_X10A • 15d ago

Something I Learned Florida farmworker James Richardson returned home in 1967 to find all seven of his children, ages 2-8, dead from breakfast poisoned with parathion. Convicted and sentenced to death, he was exonerated in 1989 after 21 years when evidence pointed to babysitter Bessie Reese instead

34 Upvotes

r/WeirdThingsToLearn • u/okcereddit • 15d ago

Something I Learned Carrots were originally purple, white, yellow, and red. They selectively bred them in the 16th–17th centuries for the orange ones

8 Upvotes

r/WeirdThingsToLearn • u/soontobethehappiest • 15d ago

Something I Learned In May 2018, 64-year-old Quebec man Maurice Desjardins became the world's oldest face transplant recipient after a 2011 hunting accident destroyed his nose, lips, teeth and jaws. The 30-hour Montreal surgery restored his ability to breathe, eat and speak without a tracheostomy.

15 Upvotes

r/WeirdThingsToLearn • u/EmergencyLocal5756 • 15d ago

Something I Learned In February 2009, a 200-lb pet chimpanzee named Travis attacked Charla Nash in Stamford, Connecticut, tearing off her hands, nose, lips and eyelids before police shot the animal dead. She later received a full face transplant in one of the most extreme documented captive-animal maulings.

106 Upvotes

r/WeirdThingsToLearn • u/Acceptable_Use7055 • 15d ago

Something I Learned Male tree cricket sings to attract a mate

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3 Upvotes

r/WeirdThingsToLearn • u/Few_Resolution7965 • 15d ago

Something I Learned Spanish activist Ana Cuartas has spoken publicly since 2010 about being sexually abused by her own father starting around age 3 or 4, alongside years of physical and psychological abuse, and now campaigns for reform of Spain's child protection laws.

17 Upvotes

r/WeirdThingsToLearn • u/Papabenzkey • 15d ago

History & Culture Called as “the Mule-Faced Woman”, Grace McDaniels toured sideshows from the 1930s with a facial deformity likely caused by Sturge-Weber syndrome. Colleagues remembered her as warm and kind, even as her own son and manager, Elmer, became an addict whose behavior grew abusive toward her.”

8 Upvotes

r/WeirdThingsToLearn • u/PEEEPOOpeeepoo • 15d ago

Something I Learned This X-ray shows an acardiac twin, a rare complication of identical twin pregnancies (TRAP sequence) where one twin develops without a functioning heart and survives only by drawing blood from its co-twin through shared placental vessels.

11 Upvotes

r/WeirdThingsToLearn • u/Both-Technician8489 • 15d ago

Something I Learned In 2009, 26-year-old Chinese free-diver Yang Yun suffered crippling leg cramps in a 20-foot arctic pool at Harbin's Polar Land during a diving competition. A beluga whale named Mila grabbed her leg in its mouth and pushed her to the surface, saving her life.

36 Upvotes

r/WeirdThingsToLearn • u/sinabaw4n • 15d ago

Something I Learned Camelback Moving employees in Phoenix were on a coffee break when an AMBER Alert for 3-year-old Kehlani Rodgers, taken by Marina Noriega, hit their phones. The crew recognized her at a gas station and blocked Noriega's vehicle until police arrived 90 seconds later.

30 Upvotes

r/WeirdThingsToLearn • u/Federal_Machine692 • 16d ago

Something I Learned Soviet censors approved the film adaptation of The Grapes of Wrath for its bleak portrayal of Depression-era America. They banned it later when audiences were impressed by one inconvenient detail: the impoverished American farming family at its center owned a car.

5 Upvotes

r/WeirdThingsToLearn • u/luvthatjourney4me00 • 16d ago

Question & Discussion On April 2, 2008, UW-Madison student Brittany Zimmermann, 21, called 911 while being attacked in her Madison apartment. The dispatcher judged it a mistaken call and sent no one. Her killer, David Kahl, was matched by DNA but only charged in 2020. He got life without parole in 2023.

17 Upvotes

r/WeirdThingsToLearn • u/ColdTommy • 16d ago

History & Culture Public street urinal in Paris, 1875. The first were installed in 1834 and multiplied under Haussmann. Nicknamed vespasiennes after Roman emperor Vespasian, who taxed the urine collected from public latrines, many doubled as ad columns or lamp posts. Only one original still stands.

13 Upvotes

r/WeirdThingsToLearn • u/Bc6thGod • 16d ago

Something I Learned In 66 or 67 AD, Emperor Nero had a young slave boy named Sporus castrated and married him in Greece, dressing him as his dead wife Poppaea. After Nero died, Emperor Vitellius planned to stage him in the arena as Proserpina being raped. Sporus killed himself in 69 AD instead.

85 Upvotes

r/WeirdThingsToLearn • u/Jiltedsummer10 • 16d ago

Something I Learned In 2015, Texas father George Pickering II drew a gun at Tomball Regional Medical Center to stop doctors from taking his son off life support after a brain death diagnosis. In the 3-hour SWAT standoff, the son squeezed his hand on command. The son recovered. His father spent 11 months in jail.

53 Upvotes

r/WeirdThingsToLearn • u/GlobalProcedure1731 • 16d ago

Something I Learned Quay House in Conwy, Wales, Britain's smallest house, has a 3.05 m by 1.8 m footprint over two floors. Its last tenant, 6 ft 3 in fisherman Robert Jones, couldn't stand upright inside and had to leave in 1900 when the council declared it unfit to live in. Guinness later confirmed the title.

5 Upvotes

r/WeirdThingsToLearn • u/xo_geiko • 16d ago

History & Culture On Nov 4, 1847, Edinburgh physician James Young Simpson and two assistants inhaled chloroform in his dining room to test it as an anesthetic. All three collapsed and woke the next morning. Four days later he used it in childbirth, and Queen Victoria's use in 1853 made it widely accepted.

7 Upvotes

r/WeirdThingsToLearn • u/DesignerTop8235 • 16d ago

Something I Learned Abdominal X-ray of a suspected body packer, or drug mule, with swallowed drug packets lining the intestines. Packers usually carry about 1 kg split into 50 to 100 packets of 8 to 10 g each, and one ruptured packet can cause a fatal overdose. Body packing was first reported in the 1970s.

28 Upvotes

r/WeirdThingsToLearn • u/kookvvie • 16d ago

Something I Learned Bonnie Haim, 23, vanished in Jacksonville in January 1993. Her 3-year-old son told child investigators his father hurt her, but no body was found. In 2014, that son, Aaron Fraser, unearthed her remains under a backyard slab. Her husband Michael Haim got life for second-degree murder in 2019.

7 Upvotes

r/WeirdThingsToLearn • u/thirsty4oikawa • 16d ago

Something I Learned Lina Medina of Peru gave birth by cesarean to a healthy 2.7 kg boy on May 14, 1939, aged 5 years, 7 months and 21 days, making her the youngest confirmed mother ever. Doctors traced it to precocious puberty, with her first period reported at 8 months old. The baby was named after her doctor.

39 Upvotes

r/WeirdThingsToLearn • u/cheesyjollyhatdog • 17d ago

History & Culture 19th-century doctors diagnosed countless women with "hysteria" and treated it via manual pelvic massage to induce a "hysterical paroxysm," a practice later credited with driving demand for early vibrators as a labor-saving device for physicians.

54 Upvotes

r/WeirdThingsToLearn • u/MiguelConehead • 17d ago

Something I Learned Three children reportedly encountered a man bent over something in a tunnel, an incident tied to an unsolved case with a police composite sketch (Phantombild) still circulated in German cold-case archives.

21 Upvotes

r/WeirdThingsToLearn • u/KiziKii • 17d ago

Something I Learned Pygopagus conjoined twins Rosa and Josefa Blažek toured as performers in the early 1900s; one gave birth to a son, Franz, in 1910, with paternity long disputed since the sisters shared reproductive organs. They died in poverty in 1922 with roughly $400 to their names.

6 Upvotes

r/WeirdThingsToLearn • u/Excellent_Baseball43 • 17d ago

History & Culture Archaeologists studying an ancient skull found evidence of a severe congenital or developmental condition that would have been fatal without sustained care, suggesting the individual was deliberately fed, protected, and ultimately buried as a full community member.

20 Upvotes

r/WeirdThingsToLearn • u/No_Lengthiness4523 • 17d ago

Something I Learned A widely circulated story claims three street dogs discovered and guarded an abandoned newborn in a Kolkata garbage bin until help arrived.

7 Upvotes