r/todayilearned • u/FactOrFactorial • 2h ago

TIL the oculus rift guy is also a retro handheld gaming guy but is mainly a military industrial supplier guy.

en.wikipedia.org

0 Upvotes

23 comments

r/todayilearned • u/247Twunk • 4h ago

TIL only three people in this world can travel anywhere, legally without a passport: King Charles III, Emperor Naruhito and Empress Masako.

firstpost.com

12.4k Upvotes

731 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Sapphire-Crystal • 22h ago

TIL of Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, a Gilded Age millionaire who died when the RMS Lusitania sank in 1915, after giving his own life vest to a young mother and her baby. He couldn't swim and he knew that there were no other lifeboats available at the time. He was 37. The woman & her child survived.

en.wikipedia.org

11.7k Upvotes

702 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Bright-Surround-747 • 5h ago

TIL that the first benzodiazepine chlordiazepoxide (commonly used for severe alcohol withdrawal) was named Librium, short for equilibrium.

edu.rsc.org

214 Upvotes

72 comments

r/todayilearned • u/OriginalSleeper • 22h ago

TIL the first close-up image of Mars from the Mariner 4 spacecraft in July 1965 was hand-colored using a paint-by-numbers method.

science.nasa.gov

92 Upvotes

5 comments

r/todayilearned • u/wandering_soles • 6h ago

Navy, not Air Force TIL about the USS Macon (ZRS-5), a flying 'aircraft carrier' built by the U.S. Air Force in the 1930's that carried 5 scout biplanes in internal hangars which were deployed and retrieved in-flight via a retractable hook system.

en.wikipedia.org

220 Upvotes

45 comments

r/todayilearned • u/FuckASchwarzenegger • 4h ago

PDF TIL Danish is unusually reluctant to respell foreign words: a Nordic study of newspapers from 2000 found that only 7% of modern loanwords were adapted to Danish spelling, compared with 17% in Swedish, 44% in Norwegian and 48% in Icelandic. Danish also had the highest proportion of English loanwords

helda.helsinki.fi

81 Upvotes

6 comments

r/todayilearned • u/dinozaurs • 3h ago

TIL that in 1985 the English band The Fall released a song titled "I Am Damo Suzuki," in homage to the singer Damo Suzuki from the band Can. The bassist for The Fall said that years later he met Suzuki at a club, who approached him by saying, "I am Damo Suzuki."

en.wikipedia.org

81 Upvotes

7 comments

r/todayilearned • u/carboncopy95437 • 53m ago

TIL that when serial killer Ted Bundy was just 3 years old, his 15-year-old aunt awoke from a nap to find kitchen knives arranged around her bed, with young Bundy standing beside her, smiling.

en.wikipedia.org

• Upvotes

134 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Giff95 • 1h ago

TIL on January 30, 1989, Kenneth Noid, believing the Domino’s Pizza mascot mocked him, held an employee at gunpoint. After his arrest and a stay in a mental health facility, the Noid remained in use until 1995, when Kenneth died by suicide. The character has rarely appeared since.

en.wikipedia.org

• Upvotes

132 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Sell_The_team_Jerry • 27m ago

TIL Disney's Fantasia (1940) was released closer to the composition of most of its iconic classical music than to the present day.

en.wikipedia.org

• Upvotes

16 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Alarming-Studio-720 • 14h ago

TIL that in Japanese folklore, Kuchisake-onna is a ghost woman whose mouth is slit from ear to ear. She asks people, “Am I pretty?” Say no, and she kills you. Say yes, and she reveals her mouth and asks again. Say yes a second time, and she may cut your mouth to match hers.

en.wikipedia.org

10.0k Upvotes

867 comments

r/todayilearned • u/AetheriaNox • 18h ago

TIL Highway hypnosis, also known as white line fever, is an altered mental state in which an automobile driver can drive safely and correctly over long distances without consciously remembering having done so.

en.wikipedia.org

22.0k Upvotes

1.2k comments

r/todayilearned • u/RiverMesa • 12h ago

TIL Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, used to be called Lourenço Marques until independence in 1976, and was originally going to be renamed Can Phumo, after a chief who lived in the area before the Portuguese arrived

en.wikipedia.org

197 Upvotes

10 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Miner_Guyer • 23h ago

TIL that an American physicist predicted that horses will reach their top trotting speed in the year 2158, trotting 1 mile in 99 seconds.

en.wikipedia.org

11.1k Upvotes

489 comments

r/todayilearned • u/conlanyoo • 10h ago

TIL that historian Shekhar Pathak led a decadal foot expedition called the "Askot-Arakot Abhiyan," walking over 1,150 kilometers across the length of the Himalayas every ten years (starting in 1974) to document the environmental and social changes in rural mountain villages.

downtoearth.org.in

152 Upvotes

2 comments

r/todayilearned • u/DrakeSavory • 7h ago

TIL that a major fire occurred on the American aircraft carrier USS Oriskany when a seaman accidentally lit a parachute flare and in a panic threw it in a locker where hundreds of flares were stored. Later the Oriskany would be the first American warship to be converted into an artificial reef.

en.wikipedia.org

2.2k Upvotes

113 comments

r/todayilearned • u/CraftyFoxeYT • 11h ago

TIL the Latin alphabet used by the Romans is derived from the Etruscan alphabet, which is derived from the Greek colony in Italy Cumae's Western Greek alphabet, which is derived from the Phoenician alphabet, which is derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs

en.wikipedia.org

2.0k Upvotes

193 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Sebastianlim • 5h ago

TIL that on October 2nd, 1942, the RMS Queen Mary accidentally collided with the HMS Curacoa, one of her escort ships, sinking it and leading to the deaths of 337 men. A later investigation placed the blame on the Curacoa's crew for the accident.

en.wikipedia.org

303 Upvotes

10 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Dry-War-9326 • 1h ago

TIL that Earth had naturally occurring nuclear reactors 2 billion years ago. In what is now Gabon, uranium deposits sustained nuclear fission, and evidence suggests one reactor repeatedly switched itself on for about 30 minutes and off for 2 and a half hours

physics.aps.org

3.1k Upvotes

171 comments

r/todayilearned • u/c00lture • 9h ago

TIL that in 1990, the creators of a comedy series formed the “Polish Beer-Lovers' Party” as a joke to promote beer drinking over vodka. It ended up winning 16 seats in Parliament during the 1991 elections.

en.wikipedia.org

629 Upvotes

34 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Temp89 • 33m ago

TIL of The Conqueror (1956), a movie filmed downwind of a nuclear test site. 40% of the crew developed cancer, triple the expected rate. Famed magnate and aviator Howard Hughes, who was the movie's producer, felt so guilty he purchased every print of the movie to keep it out of circulation.

en.wikipedia.org

• Upvotes

11 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Recent_Flounder6011 • 8h ago

TIL that the oldest-known sandals in the world were found in the 1930s dating back to 10,000 years old in Fort Rock in Oregon.

mnch.uoregon.edu

291 Upvotes

8 comments

r/todayilearned • u/mintwolves • 3h ago

TIL In 2023 Tomas Lindberg of Melodic Death Metal band 'At The Gates' was diagnosed with Cancer and would require surgery to remove most of the roof of his mouth, he entered the studio and recorded all vocals for future album 'The Ghost of a Future Dead' in a SINGLE day ONE day before surgery.

blabbermouth.net

1.6k Upvotes

70 comments

r/todayilearned • u/mahrogamers • 16h ago

TIL that Claude Shannon, whose work helped lay the foundations of the digital age, built a calculator named THROBAC (THrifty ROman numeral BAckwards-looking Computer) that did all of its arithmetic entirely in Roman numerals, both externally and internally

mitmuseum.mit.edu

601 Upvotes

42 comments

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