I wanted to add a footnote to the chapter title in my thesis. You might think this would work:

\chapter{blah \footnote{this is a footnote.}}

But it actually does not. I figured this out:

\chapter{blahprotectfootnote{this is a footnote.}}

But this also puts the footnote in the TOC. If this is not what you want, you might do this:

\chapter[blah]{blahprotectfootnote{this is a footnote.}}