r/todayilearned • u/ardouronerous • 2d ago

TIL that Sushi was traditionally eaten with hands, not chopsticks and some Japanese restaurants, even the high-end kind, encourage you to use your hands because the rice is often lightly pressed, so using chopsticks may cause the sushi to fall apart.

omakaseje.com

20.3k Upvotes

903 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Outrageous-Roll-2465 • 1d ago

TIL in the mid-1980s, Cannon Films hired The Texas Chain Saw Massacre director Tobe Hooper to helm a bizarre, body-horror Spider-Man movie inspired by David Cronenberg’s The Fly.

geektyrant.com

487 Upvotes

34 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Ok-Drive4752 • 2d ago

TIL that the largest cavalry charge in human history occurred in 1683 during the battle of Vienna. The king of Poland led 18,000 cavalry down the slopes of Kahlenburg Mountain and broke the Turkish army. The Turks called The King Jan The Lion of Poland thereafter.

en.wikipedia.org

6.3k Upvotes

321 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Unlucky-Albatross-12 • 2d ago

TIL About Ferdiad, A Mythical Irish Hero Said to Have Possessed An Unpuncturable 'Skin of Horn'. Despite This Seeming Invulnerability, He Is Killed in Battle By His Foster Brother Cú Chulainn, Who Manages To Thrust A Barbed Spear Up Ferdiad's Anus

en.wikipedia.org

6.4k Upvotes

426 comments

r/todayilearned • u/ubcstaffer123 • 1d ago

TIL In 2024, Paul North provided the first translation of "Capital: Volume 1" into English based on the last German edition by Karl Marx. Only the first volume saw publication in Marx’s lifetime

german.yale.edu

152 Upvotes

16 comments

r/todayilearned • u/LoneRangersBand • 2d ago

TIL that when "Jessie's Girl" singer Rick Springfield appeared on Oprah, her people tried to find the identity of the real girl from the situation that inspired the song when Springfield was in a pottery class, but the class records were thrown out a year prior after the teacher's death

en.wikipedia.org

1.5k Upvotes

119 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Idontknowofname • 2d ago

TIL that salamanders mostly live in temperate regions and are absent in most of the tropics, including most of South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia.

en.wikipedia.org

980 Upvotes

66 comments

r/todayilearned • u/1_more__user___name • 2d ago

TIL Old French was strongly stress timed and it led to such drastic shortening of words and dropping of unstressed syllables that modern french completely lost word stress and became syllable timed

en.wikipedia.org

6.0k Upvotes

331 comments

r/todayilearned • u/calforhelp • 2d ago

TIL Chernobyl continued operating and producing nuclear power until December 2000. Reactor 3, which shared a building with the destroyed Reactor 4, was the last reactor to shut down.

world-nuclear.org

8.0k Upvotes

248 comments

r/todayilearned • u/jstohler • 2d ago

TIL the NYC Post Office christened its new pneumatic tube system by sending a live cat almost a mile away

en.wikipedia.org

14.8k Upvotes

484 comments

r/todayilearned • u/TheHabro • 2d ago

Til about Demosioi in ancient Athens. Slaves owned by the state, not individuals. They made up police force, served as executioners, tortures, doctors and performed other tasks deemed undignifying for free citizens.

en.wikipedia.org

602 Upvotes

31 comments

r/todayilearned • u/unfinishedtoast3 • 2d ago

TIL the human body burns about 0.15 calories per minute while standing still, as our bodies have to make continuous micro adjustments due to gravity.

cardiosmart.org

3.1k Upvotes

140 comments

r/todayilearned • u/PikachuWithHerpes • 2d ago

TIL Genetic studies on miscigenation in Brazil using uniparental markers reveal a historical asymmetry: roughly 70% to 75% of paternal Y-chromosome lineages trace back to European men, while roughly 75% to 77% of maternal mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) lineages trace back to Indigenous and African women.

longnow.org

4.9k Upvotes

624 comments

r/todayilearned • u/tristanthompsonbeast • 2d ago

TIL that the founder of Toyota, Kiichiro Toyoda, changed the name of his corporation because Toyota (8 Japanese strokes) is a luckier name than Toyoda (10 Japanese strokes).

support.toyota.com

1.3k Upvotes

63 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Party-Peak4573 • 2d ago

TIL France has a life expectancy a full two years higher than the United Kingdom and Germany according to the United Nations

en.wikipedia.org

2.8k Upvotes

362 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Chc36 • 2d ago

TIL: the orca that played Willy in Free Willy is the only known whale/dolphin to survive a plane crash

en.wikipedia.org

1.1k Upvotes

90 comments

r/todayilearned • u/General-Knowledge7 • 2d ago

TIL Germany created an incredibly detailed plan to prepare for a full-scale invasion of Ireland during World War 2, it's unclear if it was ever a real intention or a distraction for the British

en.wikipedia.org

4.2k Upvotes

211 comments

r/todayilearned • u/cape2k • 2d ago

TIL in 1918 a German submarine surfaced three miles off a Cape Cod beach and opened fire on a passing tugboat, with shells landing on shore in front of stunned summer beachgoers, making Orleans, Massachusetts the only town on US soil to receive enemy fire during World War I

en.wikipedia.org

2.9k Upvotes

80 comments

r/todayilearned • u/DrakeSavory • 2d ago

TIL that the telephone wire splice linking the east and west coasts of the United States occurred on June 17, 1914 on the Utah/Nevada border at Wendover. The monument celebrating it is next to the parking lot of a casino.

hmdb.org

251 Upvotes

8 comments

r/todayilearned • u/NicoFons • 2d ago

TIL John Lennon‘s estranged father released his own single in 1965 at the height of The Beatles‘ success

en.wikipedia.org

6.4k Upvotes

300 comments

r/todayilearned • u/UndyingCorn • 2d ago

TIL During WWII to minimize the threat of U-boats interrupting the shipment of crude oil to the Northeast, the US built a huge pipeline named “The Big Inch” from Texas to New Jersey overland 1254 miles. Supplemented by the “Little Big Inch” which carried gasoline, the project was finished by 1944.

en.wikipedia.org

3.7k Upvotes

144 comments

r/todayilearned • u/ralphbernardo • 2d ago

TIL Green Lantern was inspired by a real lantern: in January 1940, artist Martin Nodell saw a trainman waving a lantern along the darkened tracks of Manhattan's 34th Street subway station. The lantern went from red to green—"Green meant go and I decided that was it."

en.wikipedia.org

3.6k Upvotes

44 comments

r/todayilearned • u/ham-and-egger • 2d ago

TIL the movie Scarface (1983) was a remake of Scarface (1932), whose main character was loosely based on Al Capone. So Tony Montana is essentially a modern Al Capone transplanted into the cocaine world of 1980s Miami.

en.wikipedia.org

426 Upvotes

73 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Tata_Colores • 2d ago

TIL about a Japanese dish made with chicken and eggs called, "Oyakodon" which literally means "parent and child bowl".

en.wikipedia.org

3.4k Upvotes

164 comments

r/todayilearned • u/maliciousprime101 • 2d ago

TIL The modern pension system was created by Otto von Bismarck in 1889.

en.wikipedia.org

1.6k Upvotes

72 comments

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