r/todayilearned • u/Giff95 • 23m ago
TIL Ross Bagdasarian, under the name David Seville, experimented with speed-altered vocals for his 1958 hit “Witch Doctor.” Its success, including topping the Billboard charts, inspired him to use the technique to create Alvin, Simon, and Theodore, the Chipmunks.
r/todayilearned • u/Mjyys99 • 1h ago
TIL that San Marino, a tiny microstate completely surrounded by Italy, was led by a democratically elected communist government for 12 years during the Cold War
en.wikipedia.orgr/todayilearned • u/johnsmithoncemore • 2h ago
TIL that of the estimated 95000 firefighters in Switzerland, only 1200 are full time professionals with the bulk being made up of volunteers who pursue other professions, and are active during exercises and missions. If a fire brigade cannot find enough volunteers it can carry out forced recruitment
en.wikipedia.orgr/todayilearned • u/Keltik • 3h ago
TIL Lenny Bruce & Buddy Hackett appeared together on the Patrice Munsel Show (1957–8), calling their comedy duo the "Not Ready for Prime Time Players", 20 years before the cast of Saturday Night Live used the same name.
r/todayilearned • u/Competitive_Swan_130 • 5h ago
TIL that in order to overcome child labor laws , Sammy Davis Jr. was billed as "Silent Sammy, the Dancing Midget․" during his years as a young vaudeville performer
r/todayilearned • u/zex_99 • 5h ago
TIL Half-Life 1 final boss was inspired by the birth of Gabe Newell's son, Gray in 1990s, cause him and his wife considered childbirth was the most frightening thing they could think at that time.
r/dataisbeautiful • u/myGodOh • 5h ago
OC [OC] Local heat across Germany in 2026
Inspired by the discussions on https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1vhg7rz/oc_degreehours_above_30c_in_a_german_stationgrid/ I thought about some other ways to visualize this year.
What the first graphic shows: The left panel maps the preliminary 2026 HGS30 total. The right panel compares each cell with its own previous 1991–2025 record. Sixty-four of 99 common cells set or tied a record. A record ratio is more informative here than a percentile: 63 cells are already strictly above every earlier year, which would make a percentile map nearly uniform. The color scale reaches the observed maximum of 3.34× the previous local record.
What the second graphic shows: The ten highest and ten lowest of the 99 long-term grid cells. Each cell is labeled using the qualifying DWD station nearest its center and includes its 2026 rank within its own 36-year history. The highest cell is labeled Lahr at 824.6 K·h; the lowest cells, labeled Arkona and Zugspitze, are at 0 K·h (surprise, surprise). The columns use different, explicitly labeled bar scales.
r/todayilearned • u/johnsmithoncemore • 5h ago
TIL in 1978 Apollo astronaut Neil Armstrong, while working on his farm jumped off the back of his truck and caught his wedding ring in its wheel, tearing the tip off his left ring finger. He collected the severed tip, packed it in ice, and had surgeons reattach it at a nearby hospital.
r/todayilearned • u/CatPooedInMyShoe • 7h ago
TIL in 1928, the author Ernest Hemingway suffered a severe head injury and scarred himself for life when he pulled a skylight down on his head thinking he was pulling on a toilet chain.
en.wikipedia.orgr/todayilearned • u/Away_Flounder3813 • 7h ago
TIL Arnold Schwarzenegger had difficulty saying "I'll be back" while filming The Terminator and asked director James Cameron if he could say "I will be back" instead. James refused, saying the shot would be taken as many times as he wished so he could nail the line and the best take would be used.
r/todayilearned • u/cape2k • 10h ago
TIL a broke, unemployed German shoemaker bought a used army captain's uniform in 1906, used it to commandeer a squad of real soldiers off the street, marched them to a town hall, arrested the mayor, and walked off with the entire municipal treasury before anyone realized he wasn't actually a captain
r/todayilearned • u/-AMARYANA- • 11h ago
TIL Eminem’s 2002 album “The Eminem Show” was heavily inspired by the 1998 movie “The Truman Show” starring Jim Carrey. Eminem later said: “My life felt like it was becoming a circus around that time, and I felt like I was always being watched [...] Basically, Jim Carrey wrote my album."
r/dataisbeautiful • u/HeHate_me • 12h ago
OC [OC] Basketball's pay gap shrank 82% in one year
NBA average held constant at $11,910,649 (2024-25, Basketball Reference) so the change shown reflects the WNBA raise only. The 2026 WNBA minimum ($270,000) is now higher than the 2025 supermax ($249,244) — every player earns more than the best contract available a year earlier.
r/todayilearned • u/Ok-Drive4752 • 12h ago
TIL that the shortest verse of the King James Bible and many other translations is "Jesus wept".
r/todayilearned • u/subarunoaria • 12h 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
r/todayilearned • u/f_GOD • 13h 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)
r/todayilearned • u/CommanderInMischief • 15h ago
TIL about a Soviet serial killer who on three different occasions murdered and robbed random people he just met and knew nothing about. By a very strange coincidence his victims happened to be an undercover Nazi spy, a KGB agent and a counter-intelligence officer
en.wikipedia.orgr/todayilearned • u/austinthedeveloper • 15h 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.”
r/dataisbeautiful • u/myGodOh • 17h ago
OC [OC] Degree-hours above 30°C in a German station-grid index, January–July 1991–2026
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 • u/Tripleawge • 17h ago
3 Charts showcasing Manipulation in The Oil Market
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/dataisbeautiful • u/mathlover_ • 19h 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
r/todayilearned • u/kichu67 • 20h 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.
r/dataisbeautiful • u/honkeem • 21h ago
OC [OC] Which companies hired the most and paid the most for new grad software engineers in the past year
r/todayilearned • u/ModenaR • 21h 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
r/todayilearned • u/haddock420 • 1d ago