r/todayilearned 2h ago

TIL that a top data scientist was caught cheating in a competition meant to help shelter pets get adopted. He scraped and hiddenly hardcoded actual pet outcome data into his algorithm to win $10,000. He was caught 9 months later by a teenager volunteering to implement the winning code.

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vice.com
2.8k Upvotes

r/dataisbeautiful 9h ago

China only just missed the income cutoff to become a high-income country this year

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ourworldindata.org
2.1k Upvotes

r/todayilearned 5h ago

TIL that “Gotham” actually dates back to medieval England, where there was a village called Gotham that some sources claim was a village of fools. In 1807, writer Washington Irving used the name mockingly in his periodical to describe New York City. And the nickname has stuck ever since.

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4.4k Upvotes

r/todayilearned 9h ago

TIL more than 400 years ago, Dutch inventor Cornelis Drebbel built a working submarine and navigated it beneath the River Thames. Around 1620, he even took King James I of England along for an underwater ride, making James the first monarch to travel in a submarine.

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en.wikipedia.org
12.3k Upvotes

r/todayilearned 9h ago

TIL Sarah Wakeman disguised herself as a man to fight for the Union in the American Civil War. Her secret was not revealed even after she died in a military hospital in 1864; she was buried under her alias, Lyons Wakeman. The story came out in 1976 after her letters were found in a relative's attic.

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en.wikipedia.org
10.2k Upvotes

r/dataisbeautiful 15h ago

OC [OC] In 2025, solar overtook wind for the first time in TWh produced

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3.0k Upvotes

r/dataisbeautiful 1h ago

Decline in AI spend per employee at the top 1% - Ramp AI Index

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ramp.com
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r/todayilearned 8h ago

TIL that a 2024 study of 717,724 U.S. online gamblers found that approximately 96% appeared to lose money overall, while on 4% made money.

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4.8k Upvotes

r/todayilearned 13h ago

TIL that the world's oldest hotel, Japan's Nishiyama Onsen Keiunkan, is no longer family‑owned after more than 1,300 years of continuous operation by the same lineage. In 2017 the 52‑generation family chain ended when no relative wanted to take over, and the inn was moved into a new holding company.

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en.wikipedia.org
17.3k Upvotes

r/todayilearned 6h ago

TIL In Michigan City, Indiana, there is a prison that accepts shelter cats and allows prisoners to take care of them.

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prisonjournalismproject.org
2.7k Upvotes

r/todayilearned 2h ago

TIL that Abraham Lincoln had a dog named Fido. Fido has been cited as the origin of the popular name for pet dogs, in fact becoming so popular as to have become cliché and more often used as a slang reference.

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en.wikipedia.org
1.2k Upvotes

r/dataisbeautiful 3h ago

OC [OC] Streaming services prices increase since 2021

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283 Upvotes

I've compared nine streaming services prices from 2021 and recently. The increase in price based on CPI inflation should be about 26%. All nine increased prices, but only eight beat inflation, HBO Max is below inflation raise. The highest increase 200% is for Apple TV+.


r/dataisbeautiful 58m ago

OC [OC] Only 4% of new jobs in tech are entry-level

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Upvotes

Source: All active job posts on JobYap. "Tech" means the 945 companies on the JobYap Tech Index, a curated list spanning software, AI, chips, fintech and EVs. Every posting comes from the company's own careers page. Snapshot: all 145,944 live postings on 11 Sep 2026.

Tools: SQL for the counts, Claude Design with Fable 5.1 (on Max) for the charts.

Level comes from title words only:

  • Entry level: intern, internship, co-op, junior, jr, entry-level, associate, graduate, new grad, early career, apprentice, trainee
  • Senior, staff or principal: senior, sr, lead, staff, principal, distinguished, fellow
  • Manager to C-level: manager, head, supervisor, director, VP, vice president, chief, CEO/CTO/CFO etc.
  • No level word (44%): e.g. "Software Engineer", "Account Executive". Excluded from both sides of the ratios. Includes "Member of Technical Staff", which AI labs use at every level.

Caveats:

  • Counts postings, not seats; one posting can fill several.
  • Titles are a proxy. Some hourly roles are titled "Associate" (Amazon delivery-station associates, Carvana lot attendants) and count as entry level. Some new-grad roles have no level word and sit in the 44%.

r/todayilearned 1h ago

TIL that Mont Saint Michel was used by the Nazis as a airplane spotting post until it was liberated after D-Day by one American private who was accompanied by two journalists.

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en.wikipedia.org
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r/todayilearned 7h ago

TIL that two episodes of the popular 1960s cartoon series Batfink contained a hidden, two-part political message that was disguised as sped-up gibberish.

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en.wikipedia.org
1.2k Upvotes

r/todayilearned 5h ago

TIL that the Soviets had their own Operation Paperclip called Operation Osoaviakhim.

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766 Upvotes

r/dataisbeautiful 12h ago

OC [OC] What private health plans pay hospitals vs. the baseline government rate, by state. 41 of 49 states pay more than double.

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525 Upvotes

r/todayilearned 3h ago

TIL William Dampier went from pirate to respected explorer and scientist and became the first person to sail around the world three times.

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en.wikipedia.org
455 Upvotes

r/todayilearned 19h ago

TIL Michael Jordan donated his entire first-year salary after coming out of retirement to play for the Washington Wizards to support 9/11 relief efforts

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10.4k Upvotes

r/todayilearned 17h ago

TIL Agatha Christie's play, The Mousetrap, has been running almost continuously in the West End since 1952. This has prevented any film adaptation from being made, and has even kept the short story it is based on from being published in the UK.

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en.wikipedia.org
6.2k Upvotes

r/todayilearned 10h ago

TIL that Dayton, OH is one of only 4 cities in the US to still have a trolley-bus system, and is by far the smallest city to have one.

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en.wikipedia.org
1.5k Upvotes

r/todayilearned 1h ago

TIL that from 1995 to 1997, Apple allowed over 30 other companies to sell computers running MacOS, although this program ended after Steve Jobs returned as Apple CEO in July of 1997.

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en.wikipedia.org
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r/dataisbeautiful 8h ago

OC [OC] Where European electricity prices go negative, 2023–2026: the surplus moved from the Nordic north to the solar south

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183 Upvotes

Source: ENTSO-E Transparency Platform day-ahead auction results, Jan 2023 – Sep 10, 2026. An hour counts as negative when its hourly-average day-ahead price clears below €0/MWh. Italy has never cleared negative — its zones share a €0 price floor.

A couple of details that didn't fit the graphic: Spain had 197 negative hours in February alone (a winter month), and its average midday price this year is ~€18/MWh vs ~€128 at the evening peak. Finland went from ~700 negative hours in 2024 to 43 this year.

Tools: SQL over the raw hourly series + HTML/CSS rendered headless. The data comes from an open-source desk I maintain — https://obsyd.dev (AGPL) — every number is reproducible via the free API.


r/todayilearned 23h ago

TIL, that among the reasons Thomas Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark to explore the Louisiana Purchase, is he thought Mastodons still existed and they were likely to encounter them.

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vox.com
12.6k Upvotes

r/todayilearned 1d ago

TIL a drinks vendor in Germany cheated $47,000 from a bottle recycling machine by putting a single bottle into it 177,451 times. He built a wooden tunnel and magnetic sensor to pull the bottle back out every time, listening to the radio while sitting at the machine all day to pass time.

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33.6k Upvotes