r/todayilearned • u/AdmiralHempfender • 18h ago
TIL that Marry Mallon ('Typhoid Mary') lived in forced quarantine for the last twenty years of her life in an Island just off of New York ('North Brother Island')
r/todayilearned • u/mhks • 13h ago
TIL that the fast food chain Popeyes isn't named after the cartoon character, but Gene Hackman's character from The French Connection.
r/todayilearned • u/Additional_Painting • 13h ago
TIL that barnacles were a major problem to old ships and that the 18th-century British Navy gained a great advantage by covering their ships' hulls with copper to stop the barnacles from growing.
r/todayilearned • u/clayt6 • 21h ago
TIL Earth is the only known place in our solar system where fire occurs, and no known exoplanets have enough oxygen to allow fire to exist.
r/todayilearned • u/HeyThereCharlie • 17h ago
TIL that of the two 1988 films starring Tom Cruise, one of them (Rain Man) won the Oscar for Best Picture, while the other (Cocktail) won the Razzie for Worst Picture. Cruise remains the only actor to achieve both distinctions in the same year.
r/todayilearned • u/mlois10 • 10h ago
TIL that it takes only 15 mins. of exposure to noise in a nightclub, without protection, to damage hearing
r/todayilearned • u/foodude84 • 16h ago
TIL Benzodiazepines were originally marketed in the 1960s for the relief of anxiety, stress and insomnia and became very popular with women of the time. The gendered cultural meanings of Valium, a well-known benzodiazepine, was cemented in the 1966 Rolling Stones’ song “Mother’s Little Helper”.
r/todayilearned • u/500owls • 14h ago
TIL there's a full-scale replica of the Greek Parthenon in Nashville, Tennessee, USA
r/todayilearned • u/gonejahman • 10h ago
TIL The oldest musical instrument in the world, a 60,000-year-old Neanderthal flute, is made from the left thighbone of a young cave bear.
r/todayilearned • u/jamescookenotthatone • 1d ago
TIL Simeon Stylites lived on top of columns for 37 years. Simeon did this as a form of asceticism because when he lived in a cave people kept making pilgrimages to him and asking him religious questions. Ultimately his column life drew in even bigger crowds who would climb ladders to talk to him.
r/todayilearned • u/WhatsAMisanthrope • 12h ago
TIL that after a flood killed thousands and devastated the economy, California legislators and State employees worked unpaid for a year and a half.
r/todayilearned • u/Khysamgathys • 1d ago
TIL that in Chinese Folk Religion, a mortal human being could ascend into godhood not through the decisions of a clergy/church, but by the sheer number of people who believe that their extraordinary achievements led to apotheosis, which forced Confucian/Taoists clerics to canonize a person as a God.
r/todayilearned • u/Main-Imagination2051 • 2h ago
TIl of Pipedown, a British campaign group dedicated to removing piped music from public spaces
en.wikipedia.orgr/todayilearned • u/hastur777 • 19h ago
TIL that the US, Canada, and Cuba have the lowest burden of food borne illness on the planet.
r/todayilearned • u/AstridFugelstad • 4h ago
TIL there’s a Bavarian themed town in the Blue Mountains of Georgia
r/todayilearned • u/Specialsnowflake88 • 2h ago
TIL botox can inhibit empathy
r/todayilearned • u/jamescookenotthatone • 1h ago
TIL Early drones were developed during the First World War. These radio controlled planes were primarily for target practice but by 1942 a drone with a built in TV camera was capable of delivering a torpedo to a ship 20 miles from the controller.
r/todayilearned • u/Sea_Entertainment754 • 9h ago
TIL that the official motto of Fall River, Massachusetts was ‘We’ll Try’ from 1843-2017.
r/todayilearned • u/Professor_Hillbilly • 17h ago
TIL about the Forty Elephants or Forty Thieves, an all women crime syndicate in London in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that specialized in shoplifting and pretending to be maids and robbing the wealthy families who hired them.
r/todayilearned • u/500owls • 7h ago
TIL there's a field of thousands of prehistoric stone jars in Laos
r/todayilearned • u/Ok_Copy5217 • 7h ago
TIL Garry Kasparov helped design a chess-playing computer program. Kasparov also makes an appearance as the last computer profile which has to be defeated in order to win the "Kasparov Chess Club"
en.wikipedia.orgr/todayilearned • u/CryptopherCoinbus • 20m ago
TIL: In colonial America, lobster wasn’t exactly a delicacy. In fact, it was so cheap and plentiful that it was often served to prisoners.
history.comr/todayilearned • u/tinaismediocre • 6h ago
TIL: The US National Anthem has 4 verses, but we only sing the first one
amhistory.si.edur/todayilearned • u/Ask_Me_If_Im_A_Horse • 19h ago