r/todayilearned • u/trubol • 2h ago

TIL in 1967 MAD Magazine printed $3 bills featuring Alfred E Neuman's face, which where used by readers to trick early automated coin change machines, and led to a visit from the US Treasury Department to MAD's office

mentalfloss.com

804 Upvotes

32 comments

r/todayilearned • u/ThatBadgerMan • 1h ago

TIL about Ridge A, a spot in Antarctica that is 3x better for viewing into space than any other location on Earth. Researchers descibe the spot as 'so calm there's almost no wind or weather at all' and all wind from Antarctica appears to originate here. It is currently claimed by Australia

en.wikipedia.org

• Upvotes

17 comments

r/todayilearned • u/BigHeart_Dove • 5h ago

TIL Fidel Castro has long tried to breed a “super cow” that would give much more milk than ordinary cows. And one day the Cuban scientists succeeded. It was immediately dubbed a miracle of socialism, and after death, Ubre Blanca was even honored with a monument

en.wikipedia.org

2.8k Upvotes

78 comments

r/todayilearned • u/positivecynik • 5h ago

TIL that dolphins from different communities and areas have different regional dialects and accents.

earth.com

229 Upvotes

15 comments

r/todayilearned • u/ProudReaction2204 • 4h ago

TIL a Dutch teenager who was going bungee jumping in Spain fell to her death when the instructor who had poor English said “no jump” but she thought he said “now jump”

news.com.au

10.2k Upvotes

474 comments

r/todayilearned • u/CupidStunt13 • 8h ago

TIL when comedian Frankie Howard died, Benny Hill was quoted in the papers as being very upset saying, ‘We were great, great friends.’ But this was impossible as Hill had died the day before. It turned out Hill's friend and press agent sent it out after being unable to get ahold of Hill for a quote

flashbak.com

1.6k Upvotes

13 comments

r/todayilearned • u/TriviaDuchess • 6h ago

TIL the highest-ranking officer killed on either side of the U.S. Civil War was Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston. He died during the Battle of Shiloh on April 6, 1862. Jefferson Davis believed the loss of Johnston “was the turning point of our fate.”

en.wikipedia.org

2.7k Upvotes

192 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Wazula23 • 6h ago

TIL the "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral" was triggered by a city ordinance preventing people from carrying guns openly in town

en.wikipedia.org

1.3k Upvotes

135 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Ainsley-Sorsby • 7h ago

TIL of "The Perfumed Garden", a 15th century arabic sex manual. On top of sex advice and hygiene tips for men and women, it also lists 30 different names for the penis and 40 names for the vulva

en.wikipedia.org

381 Upvotes

32 comments

r/todayilearned • u/tyrion2024 • 10h ago

TIL while filming 14 videos back-to-back, Ed Sheeran had one day off & spent it flying to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame to perform with Eminem during Em's induction. After finding this out, Em told him “Anything you ever need?" And on the spot, Ed told Em to appear at his show when he came to Detroit

eminem.news

7.8k Upvotes

90 comments

r/todayilearned • u/tyrion2024 • 8h ago

TIL Steven Spielberg told movie stars that if they wanted to work with him, a prerequisite was that they gambled along with him by not taking any salary upfront and instead only taking backend compensation. He said "...if my film makes no money I get no money. They should be prepared to do the same"

en.wikipedia.org

19.4k Upvotes

1.1k comments

r/todayilearned • u/Fantastic-Glove9651 • 11h ago

TIL the reason you wash your rice, other than to make it cleaner is to prevent it from being sticky

bonappetit.com

1.5k Upvotes

122 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Godwinson4King • 12h ago

TIL of Cockney rhyming slang, a form of word construction where words are matched with rhyming pairs and then the rhyming word dropped to create synonym for the original word. So ‘fart’ rhymes with ‘raspberry tart’, which becomes just ‘raspberry’ as in ‘blow a raspberry’

en.wikipedia.org

8.7k Upvotes

363 comments

r/todayilearned • u/RearEngineer • 13h ago

TIL that the yakuza have been involved in disaster relief efforts in Japan, often providing initial aid faster than the government - notably after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, a magnitude 9.0 quake that killed over 19,000 people

reuters.com

10.1k Upvotes

675 comments

r/todayilearned • u/woeful_haichi • 13h ago

TIL standard pointe (ballet) shoes are manufactured using a single last (mechanical form shaped like a foot), meaning there is no 'left' and 'right' shoe. Breaking in the shoes through use is what adapts them to the left or right foot

en.wikipedia.org

6.2k Upvotes

154 comments

r/todayilearned • u/tyrion2024 • 18h ago

TIL in 2012 a woman discovered that her ex-boyfriend from 12 years ago had been living in her attic for about two weeks. Her adult sons & nephew found him asleep in the back of the attic which caused him to flee. They also saw he had rigged the ceiling vents so he could watch her in her bedroom.

huffpost.com

18.6k Upvotes

347 comments

r/todayilearned • u/manere • 16h ago

TIL: An old english medicine receipt book from the 10th century contains a receipt for eyesalve consisting of vine, garlic, leeks and bile from a cow's stomach. Then it has to sit for 9 days in a brass bowl. Test from 2015 showed it to have a similar effect as modern antibiotics.

en.wikipedia.org

8.0k Upvotes

144 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Brutal_Deluxe_ • 12h ago

TIL for her 39th birthday celebration Queen Elizabeth and family attended a Spike Milligan play. Noticing Peter Sellers sat among the royals, Spike lobbed a slipper at Sellers, just missing Prince Philip's head, and then spent the rest of the performance poking fun at the Queen for bringing her son

en.wikipedia.org

1.7k Upvotes

26 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Proboyhuh • 14h ago

TIL your brain predicts the future constantly. Before you’re even aware of your surroundings, your brain has already guessed what’s likely to happen next. Reality is often your brain's "best guess."

mindful.org

2.5k Upvotes

114 comments

r/todayilearned • u/stefaanvd • 2h ago

TIL In Milan the Madonnina (golden statue of the Virgin Mary that sits on top of the cathedral) must be the tallest point of the city. So now whenever they build a taller building they put a copy of the statue on top.

en.wikipedia.org

185 Upvotes

9 comments

r/todayilearned • u/TirelessGuardian • 16h ago

TIL In the 1600s, the Royal Society almost went bankrupt publishing a book of fish images. This led to them not being able to fund Issac Newton’s manuscripts. His work was almost canceled, until Edmund Halley fundraised for it. They were so broke, Halley was then offered his salary in fish books.

theguardian.com

2.1k Upvotes

39 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Ill_Definition8074 • 13h ago

TIL In 1721, a Swedish widow named Maria Ersdotter was arrested for having a sexual relationship with her 24 year old former stepson. Because relations by marriage were considered equivalent to blood relations, the two were both convicted of incest and executed by beheading.

en.wikipedia.org

911 Upvotes

45 comments

r/todayilearned • u/ProudReaction2204 • 22h ago

TIL the washed-up actor character of Troy McClure from The Simpsons was retired from the show after the voice actor Phil Hartman's murder, with the characters last speaking role coming 4 months after his death. The character was based in part on Hartman himself and is similar to Hartman's looks.

en.wikipedia.org

5.3k Upvotes

223 comments

r/todayilearned • u/NATOrocket • 3h ago

TIL that perfect pitch is more common among music students who speak tonal languages such as Chinese dialects and Vietnamese, than it is among English speakers.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

123 Upvotes

10 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Trender_man • 5h ago

TIL In 1998, the city of Rochester lost its city status due to a technical oversight when the local government structure underwent reorganisation. It took four years for them to realise they had lost it.

en.wikipedia.org

191 Upvotes

5 comments

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