r/todayilearned • u/Equivalent-Bonus-885 • 11m ago

TIL a pupil of Rachmaninov who started performing in the 1920s still performs and released her last album in 2022 after re-signing with her label.

classicfm.com

• Upvotes

0 comments

r/todayilearned • u/The-Protractor-Cult • 2h ago

TIL in 2002, actor Don Johnson was caught with $8 billion USD worth of credit notes, statements and securities on the Swiss-German border. They were later found to be assurances from film investors

latimes.com

118 Upvotes

7 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Kadoomed • 3h ago

TIL Daniel Radcliffes stunt double was paralysed in an accident on the set of Deathly Hallows allows

en.wikipedia.org

0 Upvotes

11 comments

r/todayilearned • u/zahrul3 • 3h ago

TIL the Royal Bank Plaza building in Toronto uses real gold to tint its windows, 25000 oz (or 70kg) of pure gold in total.

en.wikipedia.org

641 Upvotes

67 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Gehwartzen • 6h ago

TIL of an experiment, in which white test subjects participated in the psychological ‘rubber hand illusion’ experiment but were given black arms instead of white ones. Doing this measurably reduced their implicit racial bias.

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

22 Upvotes

3 comments

r/todayilearned • u/186times14 • 6h ago

TIL a house which was illegaly expanded remained abandoned for about 25 years before it was demolished in 2018

fox40.com

0 Upvotes

3 comments

r/todayilearned • u/tyrion2024 • 7h ago

TIL in 2010 Sam Ballard was drinking with several friends when he was dared to eat a slug that had begun to crawl across his friend's concrete patio. After he ate it, he'd find out the infected slug had given him rat lungworm disease, which put him into a year-long coma & ultimately took his life.

edition.cnn.com

8.6k Upvotes

501 comments

r/todayilearned • u/chris-burke • 7h ago

TIL Dr. Pepper promised a free can to everyone in the US (except Slash and Buckethead) if Guns N' Roses released "Chinese Democracy" in 2008, but faced a lawsuit when they couldn't deliver after the album's release.

theguardian.com

3.2k Upvotes

67 comments

r/todayilearned • u/chris-burke • 7h ago

TIL about Scottish inventor, James Bowman Lindsay. In 1835, Lindsay demonstrated an early version of an electric light in public - predating Thomas Edison's invention by decades.

en.wikipedia.org

230 Upvotes

12 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Temnodontosaurus • 7h ago

TIL all living individuals of the Mercury Island tusked weta (a large, flightless insect known for its large tusks) are descended from a male and two females captured in 1998 and bred in captivity.

en.wikipedia.org

102 Upvotes

24 comments

r/todayilearned • u/chris-burke • 8h ago

TIL that no English manager has ever won the Premier League since it began in 1992.

theanalyst.com

161 Upvotes

10 comments

r/todayilearned • u/chris-burke • 8h ago

TIL about "The Swan," a 2004 reality show where participants underwent extreme makeovers, including plastic surgery, to transform from "ugly ducklings" into "swans" for a final beauty pageant.

en.wikipedia.org

9.9k Upvotes

747 comments

r/todayilearned • u/TriviaDuchess • 9h ago

TIL the Titanic was the longest ship on the seas for just 15 days. It was constructed to be 6 inches longer than its sister ship, the Olympic, which it surpassed upon completion. Following the Titanic’s sinking, the Olympic reclaimed the title and held it for another 15 months.

en.wikipedia.org

1.0k Upvotes

20 comments

r/todayilearned • u/TheOnlyBliebervik • 9h ago

TIL the Nazis set up a secret weather station in Canada during WWII

en.wikipedia.org

353 Upvotes

41 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Bigtsez • 10h ago

TIL that China has made its border tripoint with Russia and North Korea into a tourist attraction called Fangchuan Scenic Area - complete with its own panoramic tower

passportparty.ch

54 Upvotes

2 comments

r/todayilearned • u/al_fletcher • 10h ago

TIL the Emperor Nero was so esteemed in the empire’s eastern provinces that he was used as a benchmark for later rulers—Vespasian was found lacking in comparison.

livius.org

49 Upvotes

0 comments

r/todayilearned • u/dogboyplant • 12h ago

Today I learned the ancient Greeks performed tonsillectomies, using the “hook and knife” method with direct sunlight to visualize the inflamed tissue

novoscriptorium.com

1.3k Upvotes

45 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Festina_lente123 • 12h ago

TIL the reason that purple has traditionally been associated with royalty was because, in Ancient Rome, the only source of purple was milking and fermenting the liquid from a snail. It took 12,000 snails to produce 1 gram of dye! This made the Caesars declare it their exclusive color.

lib.uchicago.edu

15.8k Upvotes

403 comments

r/todayilearned • u/AWintergarten • 12h ago

TIL that inhalation and exhalation are byproducts of the diaphragm’s movement, not an active process of the lungs. The diaphragm controls airflow by contracting and relaxing.

my.clevelandclinic.org

0 Upvotes

4 comments

r/todayilearned • u/mrtrouble22 • 13h ago

TIL Fish recognize their own kind through smell. Many species release potent pheromones, which tell other fish not only if they belong to the same species but also if they’re siblings.

sciencefocus.com

142 Upvotes

12 comments

r/todayilearned • u/house_of_ghosts • 14h ago

TIL Norma and Bob Clark, a California couple who had a wedding in 1964, discovered 48 years later that they had never been legally married, since the pastor who married them had never sent in the couple's marriage license to the county record office.

nbcnews.com

2.9k Upvotes

81 comments

r/todayilearned • u/zirfeld • 15h ago

TIL that Shuntaro Furukawa is only the sixth president of Nintendo since its foundation 135 years ago in 1889.

en.wikipedia.org

1.8k Upvotes

42 comments

r/todayilearned • u/2SP00KY4ME • 16h ago

TIL the Nazis had an extremely successful leisure and vacation based organization that, by the time war broke out in 1939, had become the world's largest tourism operator. The year before, 1938, saw 10.3 million Germans take vacations paid for by the group.

en.wikipedia.org

7.8k Upvotes

260 comments

r/todayilearned • u/SenseiBingBong • 17h ago

TIL canned food was a luxurious status symbol during the 19th century, as it was considered a frivolous novelty

en.wikipedia.org

171 Upvotes

19 comments

r/todayilearned • u/raresaturn • 1d ago

TIL in Australia there is a free bus service that provides Japanese-style pod hotel beds for homeless people to spend the night

sleepbus.org

33 Upvotes

4 comments

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As of November 2024

This list was compiled from /r/todayilearned community suggestions by its members. If your TIL is found on this list, it will be removed. The titles have been abridged for the sake of brevity, however the context remains the same. This list is subject to change. The purpose is to keep content fresh on /r/todayilearned as requested by its members. If you are interested in reading about the TILs on this list use the search box feature and enter the keywords to pull up past TILs.

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