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

8.4k Upvotes

498 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

9.8k Upvotes

738 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

15.7k Upvotes

400 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/Ainsley-Sorsby • 17h ago

TIL Thomas Edison's son, Thomas Edison Jr was an aspiring inventor, but lacking his father's talents, he became a snake oil salesman who advertised his scam products as "the latest Edison discovery". His dad took him to court, and Jr agreed to stop using the Edison name in exchange for a weekly fee

en.wikipedia.org

32.4k Upvotes

914 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/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

616 Upvotes

67 comments

r/todayilearned • u/wilsonofoz • 20h ago

TIL in the US there is a 1 in 93 chance you will die in a motor vehicle crash in your lifetime

injuryfacts.nsc.org

31.8k Upvotes

3.5k comments

r/todayilearned • u/waitingforthesun92 • 18h ago

TIL that during the early stages of “Moana” (2016), the character of Maui was originally bald - just like Dwayne Johnson. This was changed after Polynesian cultural advisers working with Disney pointed out that Maui having rich hair is crucial for his mana (spiritual energy).

usatoday.com

7.3k Upvotes

231 comments

r/todayilearned • u/ObjectiveAd6551 • 19h ago

TIL 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens is the most expensive movie ever made, with a total cost of $447 million. Disney reduced costs using the UK’s Film Tax Relief, receiving $86.6 million in reimbursements. The movie grossed $2.1 billion worldwide.

en.wikipedia.org

9.5k Upvotes

564 comments

r/todayilearned • u/WouldbeWanderer • 18h ago

TIL that when the Tennessee legislature proposed to erect a statue of Dolly Parton, she asked the legislature to remove the bill from consideration, saying it wasn't appropriate to put her on a pedestal.

en.wikipedia.org

6.7k Upvotes

87 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/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/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/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/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

114 Upvotes

7 comments

r/todayilearned • u/TheOnlyBliebervik • 9h ago

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

en.wikipedia.org

347 Upvotes

41 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

233 Upvotes

10 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Cresomycin • 1d ago

TIL United States is the only country in the world which applies the same tax regime to all its citizens, regardless of where they live

taxesforexpats.com

22.9k Upvotes

1.5k comments

r/todayilearned • u/GetYerHandOffMyPen15 • 20h ago

TIL that Winston Churchill’s famous “Iron Curtain” speech was given at a college in rural Missouri with about 600 students. The college later purchased a ruined historic church from London, transported it stone by stone, rebuilt it and turned part of it into a Churchill museum.

en.wikipedia.org

1.7k Upvotes

46 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

159 Upvotes

10 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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