1. In Major League Baseball, pitchers only pitch once every five games, and there are usually 12 pitchers on a team. I had no idea. (Since I clearly know very little about sports, I will not bore you with all the things I discover.)
2. Hot air ballooning was, at least once, an Olympic event (Paris, 1900).
3. Some vegetarians and vegans eat oysters because “they are biologically indistinguishable from plants in that they cannot feel pain and are not motile.” (Voracious: A Hungry Reader Cooks Her Way Through Great Books)
4. Sweet butter extract (instead of vanilla) makes a homemade cake tastes like it came out of a box. (Also from Voracious.) I never had cake mix cakes growing up, but I imagine it is nostalgic for some people. The question is, why don’t they just buy a cake mix?
5. Scallions and green onions are the same thing. I had my suspicions, yet I somehow also assumed that scallions were a fancier version and all I ever bought were green onions. (Chives, on the other hand, are a completely different species.)
6. The number of people with peanut allergies has tripled in the last 20 years. The swift increase means the cause must be partly environmental (rather than genetic). There are eight different proteins in peanuts that can potentially cause a reaction, making it difficult to genetically engineer a hypoallergenic peanut.
7. If you buy a bottled smoothie that tastes foul (say it contains oatmeal or quinoa), you can make delicious (and need I say healthy?) muffins by using it in place of the recipe’s wet ingredients (oil, milk, yogurt, applesauce, etc.).
8. Little red bumps commonly found on upper arms have a name: keratosis pilaris.

I hope you feel more enlightened after reading this post. Feel free to share your own discoveries in the comments below.