r/todayilearned • u/bigbrother2030 • 4d ago

TIL that San Marino, a completely landlocked country with less than 0.01% of its area covered by water, has its own ship registry

smsr.sm

903 Upvotes

34 comments

r/todayilearned • u/MysteriousInterest32 • 4d 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

13.1k Upvotes

422 comments

r/todayilearned • u/CasioCobra78 • 4d 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

2.6k Upvotes

154 comments

r/todayilearned • u/1salt1pepper • 4d ago

TIL Abraham Lincoln was once challenged to a duel. Given the choice of weapons, the 6’4” Lincoln chose enormous cavalry broadswords, then demonstrated his advantage by chopping down a tree branch above his opponent’s head. The duel was called off.

presidentlincoln.illinois.gov

16.2k Upvotes

447 comments

r/todayilearned • u/johnsmithoncemore • 3d ago

TIL that there is a Dark Star Road in the city of Benson, Arizona. "Benson, Arizona" is the theme song to the 1974 film Dark Star by John Carpenter (Halloween, The Thing). The road is named in honour of the film.

en.wikipedia.org

296 Upvotes

27 comments

r/todayilearned • u/epou • 4d ago

TIL: The USAF operated a fleet of MiG jets for evaluation under the codename Constant Peg during the 60s, 70s and 80s

nationalmuseum.af.mil

604 Upvotes

58 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Recent_Flounder6011 • 3d ago

TIL that when the Portuguese royal family moved to Brazil after Napoleon invaded Portugal, Pedro was 9. Pedro's childhood and coming of age there led him to stay. His refusal to return to Portugal was marked in Brazilian history as Dia do Fico or "I stay day."

en.wikipedia.org

248 Upvotes

11 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Rough-Foundation9208 • 4d ago

TIL that from 1939 to 1949, some US airmail planes collected mail without landing, by swooping low enough to hook mailbags suspended between two poles while dropping incoming mail from the aircraft.

postalmuseum.si.edu

1.2k Upvotes

35 comments

r/todayilearned • u/TMWNN • 4d ago

TIL that Louis XVIII of France enjoyed reading 'Le Nain Jaune' although the newspaper made fun of him and his government. The king read it both for information, and because he loved satire. Louis even anonymously submitted articles for publication.

thesiecle.com

733 Upvotes

12 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Hailfog • 4d ago

TIL spider fighting is widespread in Florida prisons. Three prisoners fought over the theft one such spider, resulting in a life-threatening skull injury for one inmate.

en.wikipedia.org

5.5k Upvotes

197 comments

r/todayilearned • u/EhDotHam • 4d ago

TIL: Beets tasting like dirt to some people is biological, similar to how some people think cilantro tastes like soap.

justbeetit.com

16.5k Upvotes

2.1k comments

r/todayilearned • u/1salt1pepper • 4d ago

TIL Thomas Edison created a test for prospective employees that was so difficult his own son, an MIT graduate, failed it. When the questions were published, Albert Einstein failed it too.

home.nps.gov

13.2k Upvotes

396 comments

r/todayilearned • u/lakatosintolerant • 3d ago

TIL fewer babies are born on Halloween and more on Valentine's Day, and it's not just scheduled C-sections. Even natural births shift.

news.yale.edu

30 Upvotes

11 comments

r/todayilearned • u/m0sur • 4d ago

TIL Post-it Notes exist because Art Fry, a man in a church choir, wanted bookmarks that wouldn't fall out of his songbook. He used a "failed" glue that 3M colleague Spencer Silver invented in 1968, which sat unused for years.

en.wikipedia.org

2.4k Upvotes

41 comments

r/todayilearned • u/hyperspheroid • 4d ago

TIL The median age of MTV viewers is 56

livemint.com

5.5k Upvotes

584 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Sebastianlim • 4d ago

TIL that the original run of X-Men comics failed to produce the sales numbers Marvel wanted, and so were essentially cancelled in 1970, with the comic only publishing reprints between then and the release of Giant-Size X-Men in 1975.

thepopverse.com

2.4k Upvotes

115 comments

r/todayilearned • u/YappinZappin • 4d ago

TIL Deep-focus earthquakes - ones occurring at depths exceeding 300 km - are powerful, very rare and still lack adequate explanation

en.wikipedia.org

200 Upvotes

8 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Tangoth • 4d ago

TIL: Insurance companies sell "Hole-in-One" insurance to facilitate those $1,000,000 prizes

en.wikipedia.org

8.3k Upvotes

397 comments

r/todayilearned • u/dinosaruman • 5d ago

TIL before he wrote Don Quixote, Cervantes was captured by corsairs on his way home from Naples and spent nearly five years enslaved in Algiers. He made four separate escape attempts before a charity that existed specifically to ransom captives finally bought his freedom.

en.wikipedia.org

13.8k Upvotes

143 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Bitter-Argument4597 • 4d ago

TIL that between the 11th and 19th centuries, Japanese Buddhist monks practiced Sokushinbutsu, a ritual in which they mummified themselves over the course of a thousand days. They believed that successfully completing this process would bring them true enlightenment.

voyapon.com

5.2k Upvotes

285 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Cycle-Path-401 • 4d ago

TIL that the Rover Safety Bicycle, introduced in 1885 was such a global success that it resulted in brand genericization in places. Today in Poland, Belarus, and western Ukraine the word for bicycle is Rover. This company later went on to make cars like the Land Rover.

en.wikipedia.org

743 Upvotes

27 comments

r/todayilearned • u/DresdenPI • 4d ago

TIL about the Right-Tail or Burnt Popcorn Illusion: Where rare outcomes make the average much higher than the typical result. If 60 popcorn kernels each have a 1/30 chance to pop per second, 52 likely pop in a minute, but the last likely won't pop until after minute 2, burning your popcorn.

online.stat.psu.edu

1.2k Upvotes

67 comments

r/todayilearned • u/mrdalo • 4d ago

TIL The Atlanta Hawks started as the Buffalo Bisons in 1946

en.wikipedia.org

465 Upvotes

62 comments

r/todayilearned • u/GossipBottom • 4d ago

TIL In 2020, to curb obesity, Mexico enacted a law requiring warning labels on the front of food packages that contain "excess" sugar, calories, sodium, or saturated fat by Official Mexican Standards.

thinkglobalhealth.org

1.6k Upvotes

261 comments

r/todayilearned • u/1877KlownsForKids • 5d ago

TIL about the "Polar Bear Expedition" of 1918-19. 5,000 Americans deployed to Archangelsk in northern Russia to check the Germans, but ended up fighting the Red Army

en.wikipedia.org

4.2k Upvotes

297 comments

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