TIL the song “Basketball Jones” was written by Cheech and Chong. The Space Jam (1996) soundtrack version was a cover.
TIL that Norway is the country with the highest number of bronze, silver and gold medals in the history of the Winter Olympics with 368 medals.
TIL: A recent study of dinosaur eggshells supports the idea that dinosaurs may have been warm blooded
TIL that sugar molecules have "handedness" (like, left hand vs right hand), and that all of them are right handed. There are artificial sweeteners that are left-handed, but still the same molecule, and so cannot be absorbed by the human body. They're still sweet!
TIL after ZZ Top's exhausting first major tour, the band went on a long hiatus to recover. When the band finally reconvened after two years of relaxing and decompressing, the two guitarists discovered they had both separately let themselves go and grown long thick beards.
TIL the silent P in the word "ptarmigan" has absolutely no reason to be there. The bird's name comes from the Gaelic "tàrmachan" ("croaker"), but in 1684 the Scottish naturalist Robert Sibbald decided to add a p in front to make the word look more Greek.
TIL in 1860 a group of 76 Samurai went on a diplomatic tour of the United States. They were the toast of New York.