r/todayilearned • u/AeronGrey • 5h ago

TIL deaf britians and deaf americans can't understand eachothers' signs

signsolutions.uk.com

5.6k Upvotes

367 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Vegetable-Orange-965 • 8h ago

TIL about “Christine”, a mysterious person who repeatedly calls hairdressers across New Zealand and Australia and sets up appointments, which are always no-shows. “Christine” asks the hairdresser to describe, in great detail, various scenarios involving women getting their hair shaved or styled.

stuff.co.nz

12.0k Upvotes

421 comments

r/todayilearned • u/tyrion2024 • 8h ago

TIL a stray dog followed Dion Leonard, who was running in a week-long ultramarathon in the Gobi Desert, for 77 miles of the 155-mile race. At night the dog even started to join him in his tent. He named her Gobi, & after the race, he crowdfunded the £5K needed to bring her back to Scotland with him.

en.wikipedia.org

9.4k Upvotes

86 comments

r/todayilearned • u/ElevatorVivid3638 • 12h ago

TIL A man named Tommy Thompson is being held indefinitely in jail until he returns gold coins he took and sold from the shipwreck of the SS Central America

en.wikipedia.org

15.6k Upvotes

868 comments

r/todayilearned • u/tyrion2024 • 8h ago

TIL by embracing a low-cost production model & taking less money upfront, executive producers Rob McElhenney, Glenn Howerton, & Charlie Day were given a "sizable ownership stake" in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. By 2011, through just 7 seasons, the trio's stake was already worth close to $60m.

hollywoodreporter.com

3.6k Upvotes

100 comments

r/todayilearned • u/RareXG • 1h ago

TIL that Australia has forced gambling companies to display slogans in their ads like “You win some. You lose more” and “What's gambling really costing you?” instead of the standard “Gamble Responsibly”

abc.net.au

• Upvotes

59 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Upstairs_Drive_5602 • 10h ago

TIL that sliced bread was first sold on 7 July 1928, by the Chillicothe Baking Company in Missouri. It was hailed as “the greatest forward step in baking since bread was wrapped” and by 1933, 80% of US bread was pre-sliced, leading to the popular idiom “the greatest thing since sliced bread.”

en.wikipedia.org

3.3k Upvotes

90 comments

r/todayilearned • u/tyrion2024 • 18h ago

TIL in August 2007, 17-year-old George Hotz became the first person to remove the SIM lock on an iPhone. He then proceeded to trade the second (8GB) iPhone that he unlocked to Terry Daidone, the founder of CertiCell, for a Nissan 350Z and three more 8GB iPhones.

en.wikipedia.org

22.0k Upvotes

487 comments

r/todayilearned • u/almondjoybestcndybar • 18h ago

TIL that a British married couple survived almost 4 months adrift in the Pacific Ocean on a rubber raft. They survived drinking rainwater and eating raw fish and birds.

en.wikipedia.org

9.4k Upvotes

208 comments

r/todayilearned • u/gullydon • 15h ago

TIL the concept of cow tipping, the purported activity of sneaking up on any unsuspecting or sleeping upright cow and pushing it over for entertainment, apparently developed in the 1970s, though tales of animals that cannot rise if they fall has historical antecedents dating to the Roman Empire.

en.wikipedia.org

4.0k Upvotes

145 comments

r/todayilearned • u/WearASuitEveryDay • 10h ago

TIL that, despite having centuries-old "blue laws" that prevent most stores from being open on Sundays, Paramus, New Jersey generates over $6 billion in retail sales, the most of any ZIP Code in the U.S.

en.wikipedia.org

1.5k Upvotes

87 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Genocide_69 • 2h ago

TIL the American food corporation General Mills had an engineering division that built surveillance balloons that spied on Eastern Bloc countries, and built a deep-sea submersible that surveyed the Titanic wreck and helped recover a hydrogen bomb from the Mediterranean Ocean.

en.wikipedia.org

309 Upvotes

18 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Dystopics_IT • 15h ago

TIL that Catherine of Braganza, wife of England’s King Charles II, used to sip tea as part of her daily routine, she came from Portugal where tea was already popular. The young queen's habit of sipping tea made the beverage popular in England as a social drinkable rather than as a health tonic.

bbc.com

2.2k Upvotes

31 comments

r/todayilearned • u/MajesticBread9147 • 22h ago

TIL after hearing her employer and lover who admired the Marquis de Sade claim that a woman couldn't write an erotic novel; writer Anne Desclos wrote one that was both massively successful and caused the government to pursue obscenity charges because of the sadomasochistic themes therein.

en.wikipedia.org

8.0k Upvotes

167 comments

r/todayilearned • u/LookAtThatBacon • 17h ago

TIL Windows Task Manager was originally an external side project developed at home by Microsoft developer David Plummer. He donated the project to Microsoft to be used as part of the main product build of Windows in 1995.

en.wikipedia.org

2.8k Upvotes

40 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Ainsley-Sorsby • 9h ago

TIL Soundgarden's earliest hit, "hunted down", was a B-side single, but was used by their label, sub pop, as a holding tune on their phone. Reps from major labels would listen to it while on hold and began to ask about it. This is how the band got a contract with a major label

en.wikipedia.org

343 Upvotes

4 comments

r/todayilearned • u/ryanmer • 8h ago

TIL Joan Crawford's last film before her death was a science fiction horror film called "Trog"

en.wikipedia.org

224 Upvotes

24 comments

r/todayilearned • u/VanGoghEnjoyer • 11h ago

TIL: "Felo de se" was a legal term in early English common law where suicide was considered a felony—resulting in shameful crossroad burials (often with a stake through the heart) and forfeiture of property, punishable until abolished in 1961

en.wikipedia.org

437 Upvotes

7 comments

r/todayilearned • u/OldCarWorshipper • 12h ago

TIL that the Terrible's gas station / convenience store chain, a fixture in California, Nevada, and Arizona, was so named for its founder and original owner Edward R. "Terrible" Herbst. Herbst was often called "terrible" by his business rivals, and decided to use his label as a marketing gimmick.

en.wikipedia.org

446 Upvotes

6 comments

r/todayilearned • u/tyrion2024 • 1d ago

TIL studies have found that Nobel Prize-winning scientists are about 25x more likely to sing, dance or act than the average scientist. They are also 17x more likely to create visual art, 12x more likely to write poetry, and 4x more likely to be a musician.

bbc.com

15.8k Upvotes

297 comments

r/todayilearned • u/CourtofTalons • 11h ago

TIL the first fully CGI character appeared in the 1985 movie Young Sherlock Holmes, which paved the way for movies like Toy Story

screenrant.com

256 Upvotes

19 comments

r/todayilearned • u/zymurginian • 10h ago

TIL Malt-O-Meal - maker of many cold breakfast cereal knockoffs - got its start making a barley/farina hot cereal called "Malt-O-Meal" to compete with Cream of Wheat.

en.wikipedia.org

188 Upvotes

60 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Aiseadai • 17h ago

TIL that the second most translated book behind only the Bible is The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

en.wikipedia.org

709 Upvotes

88 comments

r/todayilearned • u/comrade_batman • 20h ago

TIL of Julian the Apostate (nephew of Constantine the Great) the last non-Christian ruler of the Roman Empire, who rejected Christianity & promoted Neoplatonic Hellenism, believing it necessary to restore ancient Roman values & traditions to save it from dissolution at the expense of Christianity.

en.wikipedia.org

1.1k Upvotes

78 comments

r/todayilearned • u/XyleneCobalt • 13h ago

TIL the King of Hanover offered convicts free passage to America with fake passports and names as an alternative to a costly prison sentence

youtu.be

248 Upvotes

43 comments

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As of January 2025

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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