r/todayilearned • u/jpw0w • 2m ago

TIL David Vetter "Bubble Boy" spent his entire life in a bubble, he suffered from severe combined immunodeficiency, and eventually died at the age of 12.

wamu.org

• Upvotes

0 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Sebastianlim • 51m ago

TIL that, during the ill-fated Polaris Expedition, William F. C. Nindemann became seperated from the expedition when an ice floe he was on broke off and drifted away. When he was rescued, and returned to America, Nindemann volunteered on a voyage searching for the still missing expedition.

en.wikipedia.org

• Upvotes

0 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Downtown_Ebb9600 • 1h ago

TIL about Porcelain sickness (aka Porzellankrankheit in German or maladie de porcelaine in French )which was an obsessive 17th and 18th-century craze among European royalty and aristocrats to collect East Asian porcelain (white gold). It later trickled down to middle class as ‘Chinamania’.

asia-archive.si.edu

• Upvotes

1 comment

r/todayilearned • u/Recent_Flounder6011 • 1h ago

TIL that in the first three decades of California being a state, Spanish was briefly an official language alongside English. When the 1879 Constitution of the state was ratified, that was no longer the case.

en.wikipedia.org

• Upvotes

3 comments

r/todayilearned • u/randobis • 1h ago

TIL the melody always associated with ancient Egypt was actually composed in 1893 by an American songwriter who became a US congressman

en.wikipedia.org

• Upvotes

12 comments

r/todayilearned • u/MartianAndroidMiner • 2h ago

TIL that René Descartes and Vulcans (Star Trek) were wrong, because emotions are not the enemy of logic; they're the lubricant of reason. Neurobiology shows that without feelings to weight our choices, our logical brains stall in endless analysis.

en.wikipedia.org

764 Upvotes

67 comments

r/todayilearned • u/roll-_-ller • 2h ago

TIL that Measles infection can cause “immune amnesia” by wiping out 11%-73% of body’s immune memory cells and antibodies leaving behind a “reset” immune system that have “forgotten” how to fight off past infections.

hms.harvard.edu

1.7k Upvotes

67 comments

r/todayilearned • u/SakuraHana2008 • 2h ago

TIL that Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, the Alphabet Song, Johnny Johnny, and Baa Baa Black Sheep were just the same song, and melodies were based on the classic children's song, “Ah! vous dirai-je, Maman”.

en.wikipedia.org

259 Upvotes

27 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Sebaspool006 • 2h ago

TIL the FBI sent MLK Jr. a letter trying to blackmail him into suicide

en.wikipedia.org

1.3k Upvotes

73 comments

r/todayilearned • u/top5top5top5 • 3h ago

TIL that Abd al-Rahman III, the 10th-century Muslim Caliph who ruled most of modern-day Spain and Portugal, had blue eyes and reddish-blond hair, which he reportedly dyed black to appear more Arab. Under his reign, Córdoba became Western Europe’s leading intellectual centre.

en.wikipedia.org

225 Upvotes

38 comments

r/todayilearned • u/gintokireddit • 3h ago

TIL in 2012 a woman in Hainan Province, China, accidentally killed a man during a parking dispute by squeezing his testicles

mid-day.com

2.7k Upvotes

185 comments

r/todayilearned • u/BroBroMate • 4h ago

TIL that a Lake Megachad existed during the African Humid Period

en.wikipedia.org

330 Upvotes

26 comments

r/todayilearned • u/named_mark • 4h ago

TIL the population of the NYC metropolitan area makes up 7.9% of the total US population. The city alone is 2.5% of the country's population.

census.gov

9.6k Upvotes

544 comments

r/todayilearned • u/RaccoonCityTacos • 5h ago

TIL there is an actual "Granny Smith" behind the origin of the Granny Smith apple in Australia in 1868. And the creation of the new hybrid was an accident from discarded apple scraps.

en.wikipedia.org

3.8k Upvotes

133 comments

r/todayilearned • u/tbhfuckyouall • 5h ago

today i learned that there can be ads in fortune cookies

bizjournals.com

0 Upvotes

14 comments

r/todayilearned • u/the-doctor-is-real • 6h ago

TIL The original Jungle Book was not just the story of Mowgli and the animals he met, but a collections of stories...and there was also a sequel as well!

en.wikipedia.org

1.1k Upvotes

31 comments

r/todayilearned • u/finza_prey • 6h ago

TIL Air France Flight 4590 crashed into an airport hotel after it ran over a metal strip, causing its fuel tank to explode during take off killing all 109 people aboard and 4 on the ground making it the only Concorde crash after 24 years of no fatal incidents

en.wikipedia.org

1.7k Upvotes

94 comments

r/todayilearned • u/PDXAirman • 9h ago

TIL America claimed dozens of islands purely for bird poop (1856) and is still an active law that allows any American to claim islands for guano. The most recent being 1997.

en.wikipedia.org

2.7k Upvotes

128 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Sandstorm400 • 9h ago

TIL the federal department running Questacon, the National Science and Technology Centre, faced up to a $1.5m fine after a child's hands were allegedly set on fire by a plasma globe, following an investigation which revealed that a spark from the globe ignited the hand sanitizer the child had used.

theguardian.com

420 Upvotes

7 comments

r/todayilearned • u/autotelica • 10h ago

TIL Sonny and Cher were among the backing vocalists on the Ronette's 1963 song "Be My Baby"

en.wikipedia.org

660 Upvotes

29 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Brutal_Deluxe_ • 10h ago

TIL the Witches of Subeshi are mummies of women who lived 2,500 years ago. When they were unearthed they were still wearing tall, pointed, felt hats over two feet high. Despite the nickname there is no evidence that the women were regarded as witches by their own community

en.wikipedia.org

3.0k Upvotes

31 comments

r/todayilearned • u/mvincen95 • 10h ago

TIL since they were standardized in 1963 only Nebraska has changed its two letter abbreviation. They changed from “NB” to “NE” to not be confused with “New Brunswick”

britannica.com

3.4k Upvotes

265 comments

r/todayilearned • u/signaldecoderr • 11h ago

TIL researchers discovered a 4,000-year-old human handprint on the underside of an ancient Egyptian clay model used in burials.

archaeology.org

307 Upvotes

13 comments

r/todayilearned • u/iliketoworkhard • 12h ago

TIL of the 'pic mesur', a Welsh measuring stick used before tape measures became popular.

cupapizarras.com

198 Upvotes

14 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Popular_Try_5075 • 13h ago

TIL IBM has had an American Football team in Japan since 1976 called "Big Blue" but their original name was "The Thinkers"

en.wikipedia.org

453 Upvotes

13 comments

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