/r/todayilearned

Title	Upvotes	Author
TIL that Christians, Muslims, and Jews have all used roughly the same word for God due to the closeness of their cultures. Jesus of Nazareth would have called God "Elah," in Hebrew "Elohim," and later, Islam would call God "Allah."	803	NoTePierdas
TIL that the Guinness World Record for the longest time a person has held their breath underwater is 24 min 37.36 seconds.	795	mycutecats
TIL New Jersey Gov. William Franklin, Benjamin Franklin's son from an extramarital affair, became the chief leader of the British Loyalists during the American Revolution. From his base in Manhattan, he organized military units to fight on the British side. In 1782, he went into exile in Britain.	786	Resident-Camp-5021
TIL that Formula One driver David Coulthard survived a plane crash in which both pilots died, before attending the Spanish Grand Prix not long after	785	FR_WST
TIL Bram Stoker wrote "Dracula" in the 1890s. Although many link the novel to Vlad the Impaler, Stoker’s notes don’t mention him. Instead, he found the name "Dracula" in a library, mistakenly believing it meant "devil" in Romanian.	760	ApocryphaDaath
TIL about this 400 year old Japanese white pine Bonsai, which has been taken care of for 5 generations, and survived Hiroshima	700	crimson_dovah
TIL: Rufus Choate was one of the greatest American lawyer of the 1800s, arguing over a thousand cases and pioneered the method of arousing jury sympathy. One of his famous cases is when he convinced a jury that the accused cut the throat of his lover while sleepwalking and was therefore not guilty.	693	Flares117
TIL the earliest known toy trains were made in the 1850s and powered by alcohol fires and real steam. They had the tendency to start house fires due to their fuel leaking and igniting when the toy fell over. Earlier models had no safety valves and would explode due to excess boiler pressure.	685	Hemorrhoid_Eater
TIL that Dan Quayle, Vice President of the U.S. (1989-1993) corrected a student's spelling of "potato" to "potatoe" in a spelling bee.	683	Thicand-265
TIL that psychologist B. F. Skinner got pigeons to repeat strange "rituals" by dropping food into their cage at random intervals. The birds associated their actions before the treats with reward, and demonstrated superstitious repetition of those actions	681	Thoning_004

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