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TIL in 1945, a radar engineer named Percy Spencer was working at Ratheon. He stepped in front of a magnetron, a device that powers radars. He noticed a chocolate bar in his pocket had melted. Later that year, he filed a patent for the first microwave oven.

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x64Eg TIL in 2019 an intern unearthed a 2,000-yr-old silver Roman dagger (still in its sheath) in the grave of a soldier at an archaeological site in Germany. It was nearly unrecognizable due to centuries of corrosion, but a 9-month restoration revealed a "spectacularly ornamented" 13-inch blade & sheath.
oBkNA TIL about Lakshmi Tatma, an Indian girl born with four arms and four legs. Named after a Hindu goddess often depicted as four-armed, the girl became worshipped, and a circus offered to buy her. After a 27-hour surgery done by thirty surgeons, done for free, Lakshmi's extra limbs were removed.
rNOmw TIL when Jim Morrison was in his senior year, the books he read and reported on were all so offbeat, that teachers thought he made them up. A teacher also went to the Library of Congress to check if the books actually existed. He also had an IQ of 149, which is generally considered genius level.
50DP TIL There was a contest in 2003 to find which building in the world was the most penis-shaped.
YpOLA TIL 'Assload' and 'Buttload' are actual defined units of measure--the former being the maximum load of a donkey (about 8 bushels), the latter a large cask with a volume of 491 liters/108 Imperial gallons.