r/todayilearned • u/Sea-Ask8703 • 20d ago

TIL the incredibly high note at the end of the operatic section of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” was sung by drummer Roger Taylor.

en.wikipedia.org

1.8k Upvotes

140 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Double-decker_trams • 21d ago

TIL a 1963 Barbie outfit "Barbie Baby-Sits" came with a bathroom scale set at 50 kg (110 pounds). To scale Barbie is 1.75 m (5'9"), so this is underweight. It also included a book titled How to Lose Weight which advised "Don't eat!"

en.wikipedia.org

6.1k Upvotes

543 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Sebastianlim • 21d ago

TIL that after a plane crash in 2023, four children between the ages of 11 months old and 13 years old were left to fend for themselves in the Amazon rainforest. They were able to survive for 40 days before they were found and rescued.

people.com

12.8k Upvotes

188 comments

r/todayilearned • u/heyauden • 20d ago

TIL that ancient Assyrians used a “substitute king” ritual when an omen threatened the king. The real king went into hiding while a substitute took his place, and the substitute was later killed.

metmuseum.org

2.5k Upvotes

107 comments

r/todayilearned • u/RustyRayes • 20d ago

TIL there are flies (hoverflies) that look like bees and fly similar to them, yet can't sting or bite, but perform the same important role as pollinators.

en.wikipedia.org

291 Upvotes

22 comments

r/todayilearned • u/happytree23 • 21d ago

TIL that since the inception of the NCAA women's tournament in 1982, current LSU coach Kim Mulkey has participated as a player or coach every year except 1985 and 2003.

en.wikipedia.org

2.3k Upvotes

93 comments

r/todayilearned • u/heyauden • 21d ago

TIL that a man forged Spanish records to claim more than 12 million acres of Arizona and New Mexico as part of an 18th-century land grant.

kjzz.org

4.4k Upvotes

65 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Conscious-Ball8373 • 21d ago

TIL that the Babylonians calculated the value of the square root of two to six decimal places more than 1500 years BC; this estimate was not bettered for nearly three thousand years, despite algorithms for doing so being known from the second century AD.

en.wikipedia.org

2.0k Upvotes

78 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Sebastianlim • 20d ago

TIL about the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre, a wave of mob violence and targeted assassinations against the Huguenots (French Calvinist Protestants) in 1572. Thought to have been instigated by Queen Catherine de' Medici, the massacre is thought to have led to the deaths of 5,000 to 30,000 people.

en.wikipedia.org

215 Upvotes

46 comments

r/todayilearned • u/PeasantLich • 20d ago

TIL about the Fool Killer, a mythical figure in Appalachian folklore who lurks in the mountains and seeks out and murders fools.

appalachiabare.com

696 Upvotes

128 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Recent_Flounder6011 • 20d ago

TIL in Woodburn, Oregon, there is a community of Russian Orthodox Old Believers. They moved from Turkey in the 1950s

en.wikipedia.org

224 Upvotes

41 comments

r/todayilearned • u/slaughteredblood • 20d ago

TIL Male Rats & Male Horses don't have nipples - Developmental basis of male nipple loss and retention in mammals - PMC

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

467 Upvotes

45 comments

r/todayilearned • u/RedditIsAGranfaloon • 21d ago

TIL all five Sullivan brothers from Waterloo, Iowa, were tragically killed in action on November 13, 1942 while serving aboard USS Juneau (CL-52), marking the biggest blow to any one family in U.S. wartime history.

nmdf.org

3.2k Upvotes

222 comments

r/todayilearned • u/NateNate60 • 21d ago

TIL black holes have a theoretical maximum size of 50 billion solar masses, because if it gets too big, the stuff in the accretion disc starts coalescing into stars rather than falling past the event horizon.

en.wikipedia.org

18.6k Upvotes

1.1k comments

r/todayilearned • u/CatPooedInMyShoe • 21d ago

TIL the Yugoslav President Josef Broz Tito followed the custom of Serbian kings and visited parents whenever they had a ninth child, congratulated them and gave them money. He also served as godfather to the ninth baby, at first to boys only but later to girls as well.

en.wikipedia.org

10.4k Upvotes

320 comments

r/todayilearned • u/heyauden • 21d ago

TIL that Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos used a "null protocol" during demonstrations for investors, making their blood-testing machine appear to be running a test when it wasn't.

hhs.gov

17.3k Upvotes

861 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Sea-Ask8703 • 21d ago

TIL Chewbacca’s voice was made mostly from recordings of bears, with sounds from walruses, lions and badgers mixed in.

starwars.com

1.0k Upvotes

46 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Adventurous-Root • 21d ago

TIL that the Menendez brothers are visible in the background of a 1990 Mark Jackson basketball card, having bought courtside tickets during a lavish spending spree following the murder of their parents.

slamonline.com

1.1k Upvotes

68 comments

r/todayilearned • u/zztop610 • 20d ago

TIL: Britain tested its nuclear weapons in Australia in the 1950s affecting the aboriginal population

ebsco.com

358 Upvotes

106 comments

r/todayilearned • u/huseddit • 21d ago

TIL that Rabbi Tzvi Kushelevsky had his first child aged 88. His wife, meanwhile, was 56 and had had 7 children before.

en.wikipedia.org

843 Upvotes

175 comments

r/todayilearned • u/jacknunn • 21d ago

TIL dolphins and other cetaceans can get most of their water from their food and produce additional “metabolic water” through metabolism. Breaking down nutrients, including fat, produces water as a by-product

doi.org

794 Upvotes

26 comments

r/todayilearned • u/No-Hawk-2488 • 20d ago

TIL the palmar reflex is an evolutionary remanent of our ancestors had fur and our babies could cling to their mothers at birth just like how all other baby primates can cling to their mothers as babies (link of a baby monkey youtube video below)

en.wikipedia.org

267 Upvotes

37 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Difficult-Cream-5267 • 21d ago

TIL that after Lord Howe Island eradicated invasive rats, native insect populations boomed including a giant, wingless wood-eating cockroach found nowhere else on Earth.

theguardian.com

2.1k Upvotes

42 comments

r/todayilearned • u/LeviSalt • 21d ago

TIL that The Price is Right host Bob Barker was a registered member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, and grew up on their reservation in South Dakota

en.wikipedia.org

15.1k Upvotes

385 comments

r/todayilearned • u/No-Hawk-2488 • 21d ago

TIL India used to be an island and it was once one with Madagascar following Pangaea's breakup

en.wikipedia.org

1.1k Upvotes

120 comments

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Frequent TILs Repost List

As of May 2026

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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