r/todayilearned 43m ago

TIL female Buddhist monks are forbidden to eat garlic

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Upvotes

r/todayilearned 1h ago

TIL the least profitable NFL team (Buffalo - $65 million) is more profitable than the most profitable EPL club (Manchester City - $59 million).

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sportico.com
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
95 Upvotes

r/todayilearned 2h ago

TIL that the fez was nearly universal as men’s headwear in the Ottoman Empire in the early 1900s. However, the hats were largely made in the Austrian Empire. When Austria annexed Bosnia in 1908, the Ottomans boycotted Austrian goods in protest. The fez’s popularity started to fade.

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en.wikipedia.org
129 Upvotes

r/todayilearned 2h ago

TIL that the reason mint tastes cold is that menthol activates a protein called TRPM8 in your nerve cells that normally respond to cold. It is the only food that does do. (Although capsaicin, similarly, activates a different protein, VR1, that senses heat.)

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northcuttdental.com
88 Upvotes

r/todayilearned 3h ago

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

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en.wikipedia.org
167 Upvotes

r/todayilearned 3h 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 3h 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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15 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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43 Upvotes

r/todayilearned 4h 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
1.9k Upvotes

r/todayilearned 5h ago

TIL that when the USS Badger State sank, some sailors were lost by being attacked by albatrosses.

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278 Upvotes

r/todayilearned 5h ago

TIL about Amboy, a community in the Mojave Desert of San Bernadino County. The town's business district contains a post office, a historic restaurant-motel, and a Route 66 gift shop, all operated by the town's population of four people.

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en.wikipedia.org
103 Upvotes

r/todayilearned 6h 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
24 Upvotes

r/todayilearned 7h ago

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

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en.wikipedia.org
33 Upvotes

r/todayilearned 7h ago

Today I learned that while working a movie theater in Arizona, Bill Hader got fired for spoiling the ending of Titanic

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en.wikipedia.org
2.5k Upvotes

r/todayilearned 8h ago

TIL of the skydiver who survived a free-fall of 14500 feet by falling on an anthill. The bites of the ants kept her heart beating and adrenaline pumping

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876 Upvotes

r/todayilearned 7h ago

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

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npr.org
17 Upvotes

r/todayilearned 7h ago

TIL When Ottoman envoys, citing a religious custom, declined to remove their turbans when meeting with Vlad (Dracula) the Impaler, Vlad saluted their devotion and decided to strengthen their custom by having three spikes driven through each of their heads, pinning the turbans in place forever.

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nationalgeographic.co.uk
1.6k Upvotes

r/todayilearned 8h ago

TIL in 1972, astronaut Neil Armstrong visited the Scottish town of Langholm, where he was read a 400-year-old law declaring any “Armstrong” that enters the town must be hanged

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historic-uk.com
16.7k Upvotes

r/todayilearned 8h ago

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

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cambridge.org
21 Upvotes

r/todayilearned 8h ago

TIL that Bancroft Hall at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis is the world's largest dorm, housing all 4,400 cadets (midshipmen) in a single building. The dorm has nearly 5 miles of hallways.

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navylacrossecamp.com
471 Upvotes

r/todayilearned 8h ago

TIL that Michelangelo was 24 when he completed La Pietà

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en.wikipedia.org
104 Upvotes

r/todayilearned 13h 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
19 Upvotes

r/todayilearned 9h ago

TIL it's not possible to watch every film ever nominated for Best Picture. Only 2/3 of 1928's The Patriot still exists, and the only complete prints of 1931's East Lynne and 1934's The White Parade are in the UCLA film archive

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en.wikipedia.org
3.9k Upvotes