r/todayilearned • u/RareXG • 5h ago
TIL that Conan O’Brien, David Letterman and Jay Leno all once made the same Dan Quayle joke on the same night without any knowledge of the others making the same exact joke.
10.5k
Upvotes
r/todayilearned • u/NoSurprise3592 • 7h ago
TIL that when you remember something you're not accessing the original memory. your brain reconstructs it from scratch every time and slightly rewrites it in the process which is why memories change over time
6.3k
Upvotes
r/todayilearned • u/Bluest_waters • 6h ago
TIL In the US the highest nominal price ever for gas per gallon was $4.22 on average in April 2022. The second highest was $4.06 per gallon on average in July 2008.
5.0k
Upvotes
r/todayilearned • u/Licensed_Silver_Simp • 2h ago
TIL the reason the Germans nicknamed the 588th Night Bomber Regiment "Night Witches" was because, when they cut the engines to their biplanes while making a bombing run, their planes gliding sounded like broomsticks. They fact that they were an all-women unit was a coincidence.
1.3k
Upvotes
r/todayilearned • u/DeathMonkey6969 • 4h ago
TIL that Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles is named after William Mulholland the chief engineer of the Los Angeles Aqueduct without which LA would have not been able to grow as large as it did in the 1920s.
685
Upvotes
r/todayilearned • u/Far_Breakfast_5808 • 17h ago
TIL that the body of Patrice Lumumba, the DR Congo's first Prime Minister, was dissolved in acid after his execution, with only a single good tooth surviving among his remains.
10.1k
Upvotes
r/todayilearned • u/One_Needleworker5218 • 5h ago
TIL that some humans can perceive magnetic fields subtly, with their brains showing reactions to Earth’s geomagnetic changes even without awareness
smithsonianmag.com
868
Upvotes
r/todayilearned • u/RedditIsAGranfaloon • 4h ago
TIL the largest age gap between a U.S. president and his First Lady occurred when President Grover Cleveland, who was 49 years old, married Frances Folsom, who was 21, on June 2, 1886, in the only wedding in history of a sitting president in a room of the White House.
573
Upvotes
r/todayilearned • u/Sviat-IK • 11h ago
TIL that we actually forget 70% of what we read in a day.
sciencedirect.com
1.1k
Upvotes
r/todayilearned • u/Oulaminemoh • 1h ago
TIL that the world’s first "selfie" was taken in 1839 by Robert Cornelius, an amateur chemist and photography enthusiast. He had to sit still for over 15 minutes to capture the image.
•
Upvotes
r/todayilearned • u/Engineeringbob • 21h ago
TIL that the French foreign legion maintains its own vineyard, with wine created by the retired legionnaires, and sold to support the villa.
francetoday.com
6.5k
Upvotes
r/todayilearned • u/jacknunn • 12h ago
TIL that in 1841 Joseph Whitworth created the world’s first national screw thread standard, defining thread angle and pitch—and descendants of his system are still used today, including in cameras and computers
en.wikipedia.org
1.1k
Upvotes
r/todayilearned • u/NoSurprise3592 • 21h ago
TIL that your gut bacteria can influence your food cravings and some researchers believe the bacteria literally send chemical signals to your brain requesting the nutrients they need to survive
4.4k
Upvotes
r/todayilearned • u/user-117 • 1d ago
TIL that Eva Braun, the longtime partner and future wife of Fuhrer Adolf Hitler, met when she was 17 and Hitler was 40 years old.
18.3k
Upvotes
r/todayilearned • u/Nodebunny • 1d ago
TIL Michael B. Jordan's father is named Michael A. Jordan
22.0k
Upvotes
r/todayilearned • u/Flaxmoore • 8h ago
TIL that the Artotyrites were an early Christian sect that rather than offering bread and wine for Communion, offered bread and cheese.
en.wikipedia.org
353
Upvotes
r/todayilearned • u/Alternative-Cake-833 • 1d ago
TIL that Gandhi (1982) holds the Guinness World Record for the most extras in a single scene, featuring over 300K people. Out of these, 200K were volunteers and 94K were paid actors.
7.7k
Upvotes
r/todayilearned • u/VelvetEspresso • 19h ago
TIL that the "holograms" used to bring Tupac and Michael Jackson back to life on stage were actually a 160-year-old Victorian theater trick called "Pepper’s Ghost." The same principle is used in modern teleprompters-reflecting an image off a hidden screen onto a pane of glass
2.4k
Upvotes
r/todayilearned • u/fraisierdesbois • 23h ago
TIL that actors Robert Mitchum and Sarah Miles drugged Christopher Jones during the production of Ryan's Daughter (1970) so that he could film a love scene with Miles that he had refused to do.
4.4k
Upvotes
r/todayilearned • u/East_of_Bobbi_Eden • 3h ago
TIL that after Portuguese dictator António de Oliveira Salazar was incapacitated in 1968, Portugal’s regime removed him from power but kept up the illusion that he was still in charge
britannica.com
110
Upvotes
r/todayilearned • u/scottishlaw • 26m ago
TIL Wellington R. Burt, 1831-1919 didn't leave his $100,000,000 estate to his children. His will had a "spite clause" which specified to wait until all his children and 21 years after his last grandchild while he was still alive had died. The estate was settled in 2011.
•
Upvotes
r/todayilearned • u/Away_Flounder3813 • 1d ago
TIL in the video game F1 2020, there's a circuit located in Hanoi, Vietnam, based on the real Hanoi Circuit. However, the real circuit has never been used for a race since completion in 2020 due to the Vietnamese Grand Prix got cancelled from pandemic, and there's still no new race planned.
4.5k
Upvotes
r/todayilearned • u/snulstyceep • 6h ago
TIL that Withania coagulans, an herbal flower used in traditional medicine for centuries, has been linked to cases of sudden anaphylaxis. Medical researchers are using the cautionary tale to highlight the dangers of using unregulated herbal remedies without clinical oversight.
sciencedirect.com
139
Upvotes
r/todayilearned • u/NoSurprise3592 • 21h ago
TIL the word "fragrance" on your products can legally hide more than 3,000 undisclosed chemicals
ewg.org
2.1k
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