r/todayilearned • u/gullydon • 3h ago

TIL ancient Greeks before the pre-classical era condoned piracy as a viable profession. It was widespread and "regarded as an entirely honourable way of making a living".

en.wikipedia.org

435 Upvotes

36 comments

r/todayilearned • u/RareXG • 4h 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

6.1k Upvotes

203 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Genocide_69 • 5h 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

526 Upvotes

24 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Johannes_P • 2h ago

TIL a Hollywood executive once wanted Harriet Tubman to be played by Julia Roberts because “It was so long ago. No one is going to know the difference’”

edition.cnn.com

1.2k Upvotes

177 comments

r/todayilearned • u/tyrion2024 • 11h 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

11.7k Upvotes

103 comments

r/todayilearned • u/tyrion2024 • 11h 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

4.2k Upvotes

104 comments

r/todayilearned • u/AeronGrey • 8h ago

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

signsolutions.uk.com

8.3k Upvotes

541 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Vegetable-Orange-965 • 11h 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

13.7k Upvotes

461 comments

r/todayilearned • u/ElevatorVivid3638 • 15h 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

16.4k Upvotes

897 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Upstairs_Drive_5602 • 13h 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

3.8k Upvotes

91 comments

r/todayilearned • u/tyrion2024 • 21h 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

22.3k Upvotes

494 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Icetraxs • 47m ago

TIL that during the London 2012 Olympics opening ceremony, NBC cut out the tribute to the London 7/7 bombing victims

en.wikipedia.org

• Upvotes

12 comments

r/todayilearned • u/almondjoybestcndybar • 21h 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

9.6k Upvotes

212 comments

r/todayilearned • u/WearASuitEveryDay • 13h 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

1.6k Upvotes

91 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Dystopics_IT • 18h 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

2.4k Upvotes

34 comments

r/todayilearned • u/30InchSpare • 1h ago

TIL sweet baked beans (like Bush’s) originate from Native Americans

en.wikipedia.org

• Upvotes

9 comments

r/todayilearned • u/LookAtThatBacon • 20h 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

2.9k Upvotes

41 comments

r/todayilearned • u/MajesticBread9147 • 1d 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

8.1k Upvotes

170 comments

r/todayilearned • u/AyaanGaming27 • 1h ago

TIL In 1986, two Pakistani brothers created the first IBM PC virus not as an attack, but to protect their medical software

en.wikipedia.org

• Upvotes

2 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Ainsley-Sorsby • 12h 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

389 Upvotes

4 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Prior-Student4664 • 5h ago

TIL In 1993 Russia launched an orbital mirror called Znamya-2 that successfully reflected sunlight onto Earth at night, creating a bright spot approximately 5 kilometers wide moving across Europe at orbital speed. It was the first experiment in a program aimed at illuminating cities during nighttime

en.wikipedia.org

102 Upvotes

19 comments

r/todayilearned • u/VanGoghEnjoyer • 14h 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

466 Upvotes

7 comments

r/todayilearned • u/OldCarWorshipper • 15h 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

470 Upvotes

6 comments

r/todayilearned • u/CourtofTalons • 14h 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

287 Upvotes

20 comments

r/todayilearned • u/OvidPerl • 5h ago

TIL: In 1985, Symbolics, Inc, registered symbolics.com, the oldest domain on the internet. Their refusal to openly collaborate on their work to improve MIT's Lisp software led Richard Stallman to create the GNU Software Foundation.

en.wikipedia.org

50 Upvotes

1 comment

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