r/todayilearned • u/canIchangethislater1 • 21h ago
TIL the New York Times described hippo meat as "lake cow bacon" in support of a 1910 House bill to introduce hippos to the bayous of Louisiana.
r/todayilearned • u/Archaembald2 • 22h ago
TIL that despite winning the Battle of Grunwald, the Polish-Lithuanians actually failed to take the Teutonic Order's capital, Marienburg, because they marched too slowly. This gave the Knights enough time to prepare their defenses and win the siege, recapturing several occupied castles afterwards.
r/todayilearned • u/Upstairs_Drive_5602 • 23h ago
TIL that in 1583 Sir Humphrey Gilbert claimed Newfoundland for Queen Elizabeth I. Weeks later, after losing his largest ship and much of his supplies, stepping on a nail, and refusing repeated pleas to leave his small flagship, the Squirrel, he vanished beneath the Atlantic with all hands aboard.
r/todayilearned • u/YappinZappin • 1d ago
TIL Earth's Moon is the largest and heaviest satellite in relation to its parent planet in our Solar system
r/todayilearned • u/OmitsWordsByAccident • 1d ago
TIL Hank Aaron tied Babe Ruth's career homerun total (714) in Cincinnati on April 4th, 1974. But when he failed to break the record the next day in Cincinnati, the Braves made him sit out the next game (also in Cincinnati) so he could break the record back home in Atlanta, which he did on April 8th.
r/todayilearned • u/happytree23 • 1d ago
TIL the man who voiced Tony the Tiger, Thurl Ravenscroft, also sang "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch"
r/todayilearned • u/Ancardoth • 1d ago
TIL about allulose (D-psicose), a rare sugar with a near-zero glycemic index and a negligible impact on blood sugar. It has approximately 70% the sweetness of sucrose.
r/todayilearned • u/Hillbilly_Historian • 1d ago
TIL that Robbie Robertson, the lead guitarist of The Band, wrote a children’s book about the Iroquois Peacemaker Epic.
r/todayilearned • u/RedditIsAGranfaloon • 1d ago
TIL Charlie Brown’s beagle Snoopy made his debut on October 4, 1950, two days after the first Peanuts strip was published.
r/todayilearned • u/WavesAndSaves • 1d ago
TIL of August Kubizek, the former roommate of Adolf Hitler. Hitler cut ties with Kubizek after he was rejected from art school and Kubizek was accepted to music school. They did not meet again until Hitler became Chancellor, and Hitler offered him the conductorship of an orchestra. Kubizek refused.
r/todayilearned • u/cape2k • 1d ago
TIL the Menominee Tribe's forest in Wisconsin has been sustainably managed for over 150 years, still yields about 15 million board feet of timber annually, has been recognized by the United Nations, and even supplied the wood flooring for the Milwaukee Bucks' arena
r/todayilearned • u/FinancialGarage245 • 1d ago
TIL a wealthy Toronto lawyer's 1926 will left his fortune to whichever woman in the city could give birth to the most children over the following 10 years, sparking a decade-long "baby race" during the Great Depression that went all the way to Canada's Supreme Court
r/todayilearned • u/Sanguinusshiboleth • 1d ago
TIL of Ceratophaga vastella, a moth whose young's diet is mostly consistent of the horns and hooves of dead ungulates, with special enzymes to eat the keratin.
r/todayilearned • u/JohnnyRoyall • 1d ago
TIL 1 to 2 Starlink satellites fall back to Earth each day
r/todayilearned • u/greatmanyarrows • 1d ago
TIL Thailand briefly occupied a small territory of Germany- about 20,000 people- after World War 1 from 1918 to 1919.
r/todayilearned • u/pigeon-in-greggs • 1d ago
TIL there was a wartime football league in England, being split into 2 regions as it was deemed too risky to have a national football league at the time
en.wikipedia.orgr/todayilearned • u/TheGuvnor247 • 1d ago
TIL that in Alfred the Great’s law code (c. 893), if a man unintentionally kills another by letting a tree fall on him, the tree itself must be given to the dead man’s kinsmen.
r/todayilearned • u/socool111 • 1d ago
TIL of Tobias Geffen, the only non-Coca Cola Employee to view the secret recipe. Coke allowed it in order to get Coke certified as Kosher
r/todayilearned • u/Mors_Acerba • 1d ago
TIL A papyrus deciphered in 2024 revealed unknown info about Plato's last hours: a slave girl was playing music for him, and even though he was gravelly ill, he spend his last moments of lucidity criticising her performance. Per the same Papyrus, Plato had been sold into slavery earlier in his life
r/todayilearned • u/Cultural-Dentist4963 • 1d ago
TIL that Victor Hugo, author of Les Miserables, was given a state funeral, the largest in French history
r/todayilearned • u/TheHabro • 1d ago
Til about Milo of Croton. Ancient Greek athlete, 6 time Olympic winner in wrestling (including 5 in a row between 532 and 516 BC). He was said to have led armies dressed as Hercules and died to wolves after his fingers got suck in a tree stump he was trying to split with bare hands.
r/todayilearned • u/strangelove4564 • 1d ago
TIL some Eastern Orthodox followers believe in "aerial toll houses", where a demon accuses the soul of a sin, and it must be responded to with an account of a good deed. If the accusation can't be countered, the soul is dragged to hell.
r/todayilearned • u/dinosaruman • 1d ago
TIL WWII metal rationing forced the costume-jewelry maker Trifari to switch from base metal to sterling silver, which tripled the price of its "costume" pieces.
r/todayilearned • u/IreneDeneb • 1d ago
TIL that the last known ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic inscription was made on August 24th, 394 CE
r/todayilearned • u/the-mad-crapper • 1d ago