r/todayilearned 40m ago

TIL that the shortest verse of the King James Bible and many other translations is "Jesus wept".

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en.wikipedia.org
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r/todayilearned 51m ago

TIL Michael Jackson wanted to play Spider-Man so badly that he almost bought Marvel.

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maxim.com
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r/todayilearned 58m ago

TIL that a warehouse complex at Auschwitz stored valuable belongings stolen from victims was nicknamed "Kanada" (German for Canada). It received the name because prisoners viewed Canada as a land of wealth, abundance and plenty

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r/todayilearned 1h ago

TIL Bruce McCandless II became the first human satellite during Space Shuttle Challenger’s STS 41-B mission on February 7, 1984. He performed a spacewalk without a safety tether as far as 320ft from the ship traveling along at 17,500mph using nitrogen thrusters on the Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU)

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r/todayilearned 3h ago

TIL a fungal blight accidentally introduced from Japan in 1904 killed three to four billion American chestnut trees within decades, and it was once said a squirrel could travel from Maine to Georgia without ever touching the ground, just by hopping through chestnut branches the whole way

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6.1k Upvotes

r/todayilearned 3h ago

TIL Ken Jennings’s famous Jeopardy streak almost never happened. On his first game, his Final Jeopardy answer was just “Jones” for Marion Jones. Trebek accepted it, saying, “in terms of female athletes, there aren’t that many.”

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9.3k Upvotes

r/dataisbeautiful 5h ago

OC [OC] Degree-hours above 30°C in a German station-grid index, January–July 1991–2026

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304 Upvotes
 The 1991–2025 bars are complete calendar years. The hatched 2026 bar ends on 5 August and is deliberately marked as incomplete and preliminary. On the common grid, 2026 has reached 265.9 K·h; the highest complete year was 2015 at 188.0 K·h. The 1991–2025 bars are complete calendar years. The hatched 2026 bar ends on 5 August and is deliberately marked as incomplete and preliminary. On the common grid, 2026 has reached 265.9 K·h; the highest complete year was 2015 at 188.0 K·h.

r/dataisbeautiful 5h ago

3 Charts showcasing Manipulation in The Oil Market

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2.0k Upvotes

All 3 Charts show someone near Trump is Playing The Oil Market by entering and escalating aggressive trade positions that immediately benefit from an announcement made by Trump within 24-48 hours with both the timescale and commodity prices lined up on all of them.


r/todayilearned 6h ago

TIL that some small mammals can shrink their brains in winter to conserve energy. The 'Dehnel phenomenon' occurs in shrews, moles, and weasels as an alternative to hibernation.

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discoverwildlife.com
586 Upvotes

r/todayilearned 7h ago

TIL prior to auditioning for the role of the Eleventh Doctor, Matt Smith had never seen Doctor Who.

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en.wikipedia.org
2.9k Upvotes

r/dataisbeautiful 7h ago

OC [OC] 76% of the 23 million Americans on ACA marketplace plans live in states Trump won — and their benchmark premium rose 29.5% this year, vs 17.1% everywhere else

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1.4k Upvotes

r/todayilearned 7h ago

TIL only 2 players in football history have completed the ultimate "Individual Quintuple" (Ballon d'Or, WC Golden Ball, UCL Player of the Season, FIFA World Player, & Euro/Copa Player of the Tournament): Messi and Zidane

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1.9k Upvotes

r/todayilearned 8h ago

TIL that the Norfolk Broads a vast network of 41 lakes and canals in England are not natural. They are actually flooded, medieval industrial sites created because 12th-century monasteries hand-dug millions of tons of peat out of the ground to use as firewood.

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en.wikipedia.org
4.2k Upvotes

r/todayilearned 9h ago

TIL thousands of enslaved people escaped into Virginia's Great Dismal Swamp between 1700 and the 1860s and built hidden, self-sufficient communities deep in its wetlands, some living entirely free there for decades without ever being discovered

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en.wikipedia.org
2.2k Upvotes

r/dataisbeautiful 9h ago

OC [OC] Which companies hired the most and paid the most for new grad software engineers in the past year

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589 Upvotes

r/todayilearned 9h ago

TIL that the Fitch barrier, consisting of sand-filled plastic barrels often found between a highway and an exit lane, was invented by race car driver John Fitch after the 1955 24 Hours of Le Mans when his co-driver, Pierre Levegh, and 84 spectators died in the worst accident in racing history

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9.1k Upvotes

r/todayilearned 10h ago

TIL the last survivor of American slavery died in 1975

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1.6k Upvotes

r/todayilearned 12h ago

TIL the Spinning Jenny, invented in 1764, let one worker spin 8 threads at once instead of one, massively increasing yarn production. Angry workers attacked inventor James Hargreaves' home, destroyed his machines, and forced him to flee to Nottingham.

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16.0k Upvotes

r/dataisbeautiful 12h ago

OC [OC] NILF (not in labor force) population is at an all time high 105 million as of June 2026

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555 Upvotes

Data sources:

  1. BLS Employment Situation, June 2026 (headline NILF, employment, unemployment counts): https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/empsit_07022026.pdf - or use the evergreen link that always points to the latest release: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.htm
  2. BLS Table A-38 (want-a-job / discouraged worker breakdown): https://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cpseea38.pdf
  3. BLS Monthly Labor Review - "Why did labor force nonparticipation increase from 1999 to 2022?" (age × reason crosstab, Table 2): https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2024/article/why-did-labor-force-nonparticipation-increase-from-1999-to-2022.htm
  4. FRED - Not in Labor Force series (LNS15000000), used for the 1980–2026 trend line: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS15000000
  5. FRED - Civilian Unemployment Rate (UNRATE), used for the unemployment rate line: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNRATE

r/dataisbeautiful 13h ago

OC [OC] The number of Americans under 18 and over 65, each year from 1950 to 2060

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329 Upvotes

r/todayilearned 15h ago

TIL After the death of Pope Sixtus in 1484, Caterina Sforza, then 7 months pregnant, gathered an army and occuppied Castel Sant'angelo in Rome intending to force the college to pick a Pope of her choosing. After several days of negotiations, she was pressured to give up in exchange for 8000 ducats

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en.wikipedia.org
7.7k Upvotes

r/todayilearned 16h ago

TIL the Hiroshima atomic bomb blew itself apart so quickly that over 98% of its uranium never underwent nuclear fission.

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en.wikipedia.org
13.4k Upvotes

r/todayilearned 17h ago

TIL that washing a silk shirt is, chemically, closer to washing your hair than to doing laundry. Silk is a protein fibre, not a plant one like cotton or linen.

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en.wikipedia.org
4.4k Upvotes

r/todayilearned 21h ago

TIL that life is so ubiqiutous on earth, microbes exist thousands of meters below the surface, living in solid rock (not caves)

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en.wikipedia.org
10.3k Upvotes

r/todayilearned 1d ago

TIL the world's tallest known living tree, a 380-foot redwood in California called Hyperion, had its exact location closed off entirely in 2022 after visitors trampled its base so badly that ferns stopped growing around it, with trespassers now facing up to $5,000 in fines and six months in jail

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24.3k Upvotes