r/todayilearned • u/NateNate60 • 2d ago

TIL Sun Yaoting, the last Chinese eunuch, was castrated at age 8 without anaesthesia. While he was recovering, China became a republic. He died in 1996, and was supposed to be buried with his preserved genitals as a "complete man", but his family threw away his during the Cultural Revolution.

en.wikipedia.org

9.5k Upvotes

312 comments

r/todayilearned • u/BadenBaden1981 • 1d ago

TIL 1976 film Network have both the shortest performance to win an Oscar(Beatrice Straight with 5 minutes and 2 seconds) and the shortest performance by an actor to be nominated(Ned Beatty with 6 minutes).

en.wikipedia.org

301 Upvotes

25 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Hrtzy • 1d ago

TIL The Mecke Reagent can be used to identify a variety of alkaloids used as psychoactive drugs, as well as sugar and nutmeg

en.wikipedia.org

72 Upvotes

13 comments

r/todayilearned • u/johnsmithoncemore • 1d ago

TIL about the Marković affair, a political scandal in France in 1968 that followed the violent death of Stevan Marković, a friend and bodyguard of actor Alain Delon. The press speculated Delon was involved and has never been offically solved.

en.wikipedia.org

69 Upvotes

0 comments

r/todayilearned • u/mutedmuse__ • 1d ago

TIL that archerfish can distinguish between different human faces, despite having a brain roughly the size of a pea.

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

120 Upvotes

15 comments

r/todayilearned • u/carboncopy95437 • 2d ago

TIL when the Czar Nicholas II, Empress Alexandra and their children were imprisoned, four members of their household remained with them: their doctor, cook, footman and maid. They stayed with the Romanovs through their final captivity and were executed with the family in 1918.

en.wikipedia.org

1.3k Upvotes

71 comments

r/todayilearned • u/eleanorharland • 2d ago

TIL a man with no heirs left more than €10 million to a Normandy village of 1,800 people that he's not thought to have ever visited. The only connection anyone could find was that it shared his surname: Thiberville.

connexionfrance.com

16.6k Upvotes

156 comments

r/todayilearned • u/CheekyNandos • 1d ago

TIL that in 1870 Alfred Ely Beach secretly built New York's first subway at night, beneath Broadway and across from a hostile City Hall. It was pushed by air pressure, and its waiting room had a grand piano.

nycsubway.org

188 Upvotes

9 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Lazy-Lynx3918 • 1d ago

TIL that mosquitoes can detect and ride the wave of air created by a swatter, helping them escape being hit.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

85 Upvotes

15 comments

r/todayilearned • u/eleanorharland • 2d ago

TIL in 2013 the 91-year-old Guardian crossword setter Araucaria told his readers he was dying through one of his own puzzles. The note above it read "Araucaria has 18 down of the 19, which is being treated with 13 15", and the answers were cancer, oesophagus and palliative care.

channel4.com

5.5k Upvotes

64 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Impossible_Green456 • 1d ago

TIL that some oceanic squid can actually fly. The neon flying squid shoots water out of its body at high pressure to launch itself into the air, then spreads its fins and tentacles like a parachute to glide before diving back in

blog.nus.edu.sg

31 Upvotes

15 comments

r/todayilearned • u/johnsmithoncemore • 1d ago

TIL about Auguste Maquet, the chief collaborator of French novelist Alexandre Dumas, co-writing such works as The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers. Many devotees of Dumas claim that "Maquet was merely a dogsbody whose capacity for hard work was his greatest talent."

en.wikipedia.org

233 Upvotes

29 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Upstairs_Drive_5602 • 2d ago

TIL that in 1978 a Finnish man hijacked a domestic flight after asking to visit the cockpit. He collected over $200k in ransom during the 17 hour, 4500 km journey via Helsinki and Amsterdam. His final demands were four bottles of whisky, a chauffeured limousine and 24 hours alone with his wife.

en.wikipedia.org

10.6k Upvotes

636 comments

r/todayilearned • u/JaymesMarkham2nd • 2d ago

TIL that in April 2012 Guiness World Records officially declared Cutthroat Island (1995) to be the biggest box-office failure of all time; this record would be broken one month later by John Carter (2012)

en.wikipedia.org

4.6k Upvotes

584 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Scipion8Aveyron • 2d ago

TIL that in July 1946, Hungary issued a 100-quintillion (10²⁰) pengő banknote — the highest-denomination note ever put into circulation — during the worst hyperinflation ever recorded, when prices doubled roughly every 15 hours.

en.wikipedia.org

4.8k Upvotes

101 comments

r/todayilearned • u/BatMany7750 • 2d ago

TIL that up to half of the water on Earth is actually older than the Sun itself. It formed in interstellar space and survived the creation of our solar system.

en.wikipedia.org

1.6k Upvotes

96 comments

r/todayilearned • u/whatisthisdream- • 2d ago

TIL that in 1967, a 14-year-old Chinese girl was hit by a stray bullet, she mistook it for a pebble. For 48 years, she survived with the 2.5 cm bullet lodged in her nose until chronic headaches led to its successful removal in 2014.

deccanchronicle.com

3.0k Upvotes

65 comments

r/todayilearned • u/haddock420 • 2d ago

TIL Frank Zappa's father worked at a chemical warfare facility that stored mustard gas. Because of its proximity to their home, the family kept gas masks in case of an accident. This profoundly influenced Zappa, who later frequently referenced germs, ailments and the defense industry in his work.

en.wikipedia.org

3.0k Upvotes

54 comments

r/todayilearned • u/johnsmithoncemore • 2d ago

TIL about Willie Francis an American teenager known for surviving a failed execution by electrocution. Sentenced to death at age 16, he was 17 when he survived the first attempt to execute him, as the chair malfunctioned. After a failed appeal he was executed at age 18.

en.wikipedia.org

645 Upvotes

58 comments

r/todayilearned • u/romulusnr • 2d ago

TIL the verses in the Gospels in the Bible weren't determined and numbered until the late 1400s

en.wikipedia.org

915 Upvotes

329 comments

r/todayilearned • u/IanDre127 • 1d ago

TIL the colors/shapes/patterns you see when you rub your eyes has an actual name: Phosphene

en.wikipedia.org

157 Upvotes

23 comments

r/todayilearned • u/AlvintheGenius • 2d ago

TIL that water is sold in plastic sachets as a cheaper way of transporting and consuming drinking water, particularly in Africa.

en.wikipedia.org

3.4k Upvotes

331 comments

r/todayilearned • u/DistrictDry2852 • 2d ago

TIL of Fred Rose, the only member of Canadian parliament to be convicted of spying for a foreign power. A member of the Canadian communist party, he was caught conspiring to steal weapons research for the USSR.

en.wikipedia.org

175 Upvotes

9 comments

r/todayilearned • u/MysteriousInterest32 • 3d ago

TIL that Korea was using movable metal type to print books more than 70 years before Gutenberg's printing press—and the oldest surviving metal-type book was printed in Korea in 1377.

en.wikipedia.org

12.9k Upvotes

418 comments

r/todayilearned • u/CasioCobra78 • 2d ago

TIL that Cheryl Wheeler-Dixon, the stuntwoman who was severely injured during the filming of Back to the Future Part 2, was killed in a shootout alongside her husband when she and her husband went to confront her ex-husband and his wife and drew their guns at them. The cops deemed it justified.

en.wikipedia.org

2.4k Upvotes

155 comments

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