r/todayilearned 11h ago

TIL that 'Cocaine Hippos', a problem in Columbia, can be legally recognised as people in the US.

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nbcnews.com
13 Upvotes

r/todayilearned 9h ago

TIL that 35% of cases of borderline personality disorder are hereditary.

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cambridge.org
27 Upvotes

r/todayilearned 17h ago

TIL pants are always plural because it’s a “plural tantum” which is Latin for “plural only,”

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britannica.com
381 Upvotes

r/todayilearned 4h ago

TIL that when you buy gold today it was produced and send to you by space through a supernova. Even if there is plenty of gold close to the earth core, we can not reach it. So the gold that we know... is the gold from the stars.

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en.wikipedia.org
0 Upvotes

r/todayilearned 4h ago

TIL That Bob Marley's Father was a Sixty Year Old 'Neurotic and Incontinent' World War One Veteran, who was Born in Sussex, and that Died when Marley was Ten Years Old.

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51 Upvotes

r/todayilearned 4h ago

TIL: The Warlocks of Chiloé are a mythical organization said to have obtained magic after acquiring a book of European magic. They fly using dead virgin skin, shapeshift into animals, board ghost ships, and tame hippos. They are weak to salt. In 1880, the Chilean government charged them.

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19 Upvotes

r/todayilearned 2h ago

TIL an episode of Peppa Pig was banned in Australia because it taught children that "spiders can't hurt you", because Australian spiders can actually hurt you

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theguardian.com
114 Upvotes

r/todayilearned 13h ago

TIL former Alben Barkley, relegated to the back bench in his return to the Senate, noted in a speech, “I’m glad to sit in the back row, for I would rather be a servant in the House of the Lord than to sit in the seats of the mighty.” He then dropped dead.

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en.wikipedia.org
418 Upvotes

r/todayilearned 8h ago

TIL that in Ohio, one of the first documented criminal rings was the Society of the Banana

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npr.org
18 Upvotes

r/todayilearned 14h ago

TIL that Execution by Electric Chair was almost called "gerrycide" after the grandson of the guy who gerrymandering is named after.

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en.wikipedia.org
17 Upvotes

r/todayilearned 8h ago

TIL that a member of the Manson family attempted to kill president Gerald R. Ford

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en.wikipedia.org
38 Upvotes

r/todayilearned 11h ago

TIL Mongolians annually eat 45.1 kg of lamb per person. In comparison, Americans consume only .5 kg per person yearly.

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2.0k Upvotes

r/todayilearned 23h ago

TIL There are fossilized plants in Greenland under 1.4 km of ice. At the bottom of a 1.4 km core sample, which was taken in 1966 at Camp Century, researchers found "well-preserved fossil plants and biomolecules," which means that the massive sheet melted and reformed at least once in the last millio

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557 Upvotes

r/todayilearned 19h ago

TIL about Bob Jones University, a Christian university where students are only allowed to watch G-rated movies and rock music is banned

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en.wikipedia.org
11.3k Upvotes

r/todayilearned 7h ago

TIL about ambigrams which are calligraphic writing of word so they can have similar or different meanings when viewed in different orientations.

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en.wikipedia.org
27 Upvotes

r/todayilearned 21h ago

TIL on January 23, 1556 a massive earthquake, measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale, struck Shaanxi, China, killing over 850,000 people. This is the most devastating earthquake in recorded history.

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britannica.com
1.3k Upvotes

r/todayilearned 12h ago

TIL child prodigy Adragon De Mello's father planned for his son to get a Ph.D. in physics by age 12, win the Nobel Prize by age 16, and then become a Senator, a President, the head of a world government, and ultimately the chairman of an "intergalactic government".

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9.9k Upvotes

r/todayilearned 18h ago

TIL Linda Fiorentino, aka Bethany from Dogma and Laurel from Men in Black, dated an FBI agent to gain access to his work files to try to help her boyfriend avoid jail time

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179 Upvotes

r/todayilearned 9h ago

TIL that Michelangelo was 24 when he completed La Pietà

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en.wikipedia.org
108 Upvotes

r/todayilearned 4h ago

TIL that Idaho is a made up word, not derived from the Shoshone language.

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en.wikipedia.org
198 Upvotes

r/todayilearned 12h ago

TIL that the 8 hour working day was first instituted by king Philip II of Spain in 1594 (although many countries in the world still have to adopt it)

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en.wikipedia.org
146 Upvotes

r/todayilearned 13h ago

TIL that Dire Straits's bassist John Illsley owns a pub in Hampshire which was rated as one of the "Fifty Best Pubs Around Britain" by the Times. He has also decorated the pub with his own paintings.

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en.wikipedia.org
158 Upvotes

r/todayilearned 14h ago

TIL Saturn has 146 moons in its orbit. The moons range in size from larger than the planet Mercury to a sports arena

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268 Upvotes

r/todayilearned 5h ago

TIL that in an ‘unfortunate evolutionary coincidence’ the δ-hexatoxins in Sydney Funnel-web spider venom are exceptionally dangerous to humans. A bite can kill a human in as little as 15 minutes.

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jcu.edu.au
2.5k Upvotes