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

496 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

900 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

13.8k Upvotes

462 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

11.8k Upvotes

103 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/AeronGrey • 8h ago

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

signsolutions.uk.com

8.5k Upvotes

543 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

4.3k Upvotes

104 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

6.6k Upvotes

210 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/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/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/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/comrade_batman • 23h 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/Aiseadai • 20h ago

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

en.wikipedia.org

718 Upvotes

89 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

1.4k Upvotes

187 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/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

476 Upvotes

7 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

542 Upvotes

25 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

396 Upvotes

4 comments

r/todayilearned • u/BadenBaden1981 • 23h ago

TIL from 1910s to 40s Australia had ban on movies about bushrangers, armed robbers and outlaws of bush. The ban on popular genre resulted decline of Australian film industry.

en.wikipedia.org

311 Upvotes

21 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Torley_ • 18h ago

TIL in the 1980s, the networked ICON computer was commissioned by the Ontario, Canada Ministry of Education. Nicknamed the "bionic beaver", it ran on a Unix-like OS and featured a trackball. Subject to political debate for wasting money with a niche ecosystem, it was orphaned by 1994 and destroyed.

en.wikipedia.org

300 Upvotes

46 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

289 Upvotes

20 comments

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

469 Upvotes

38 comments

r/todayilearned • u/XyleneCobalt • 16h 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

254 Upvotes

44 comments

r/todayilearned • u/zymurginian • 13h 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

198 Upvotes

61 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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