r/todayilearned

28.9K

r/todayilearned • Posted by u/theted3000 6 hours ago ( kotaku.com )

TIL many Chinese medical tourists who go to South Korea for inexpensive and high quality plastic surgery have difficulty re-entering China due to their passports photos not matching their new face post op.

https://kotaku.com/how-south-korean-plastic-surgeons-make-passport-photos-1563323919

6.65K

r/todayilearned • Posted by u/Either_Individual_82 8 hours ago ( en.wikipedia.org )

TIL in 882 Louis III of France mounted his horse in pursuit of a girl who was running to seek refuge in her father's house. He then rode through a low door, hit his head on the lintel and fractured his skull. He died childless. He is one of two French kings to die from hitting a door lintel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_III_of_France

3.19K

r/todayilearned • Posted by u/adamchain 5 hours ago ( en.wikipedia.org )

TIL in 1913, John D. Rockefeller was worth $900 million, or 3% of the entire GDP of the United States that year. His fortune was worth a modern equivalent of $418 billion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Rockefeller

8.22K

r/todayilearned • Posted by u/IGuessYourSubreddits 13 hours ago ( nbcnews.com )

TIL AOL and Yahoo!, which Verizon acquired for $9.2 billion in 2016, were effectively worthless by 2018.

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/verizon-signals-its-yahoo-aol-divisions-are-almost-worthless-n946846

83.2K

r/todayilearned • Posted by u/malalatargaryen 19 hours ago ( abcnews.go.com )

TIL that in Moscow, packs of stray dogs will sometimes send out a smaller, cuter member to beg for food, apparently realising it will be more successful than its bigger, less attractive counterparts

https://abcnews.go.com/International/Technology/stray-dogs-master-complex-moscow-subway-system/story?id=10145833

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r/todayilearned • Posted by u/NewAccountEachYear 13 hours ago ( en.wikipedia.org )

TIL of the Sausage Duel. Otto Von Bismarck challenged his political nemesis (and pioneer of social medicine) Rudolf Virchow to a duel, allowing him to choose weapons. Rudolf decided upon sausages. One sauage would be safe, the other infected with parasitic larvae. Otto recinded the challenge.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudolf_Virchow#The_Sausage_Duel

853

r/todayilearned • Posted by u/DystopianAdvocate 9 hours ago ( en.wikipedia.org )

TIL That Billy West, the voice actor who plays Fry in Futurama and the red M&M in commercials, was born born with ADHD and autism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_West?1

1.39K

r/todayilearned • Posted by u/Miskatonica 13 hours ago ( sciencemag.org )

TIL pollen-deprived bumble bees tend to bite plant leaves more often than when pollen is plentiful; the bumble bee bites stimulate early flowering. Scientists compared bumble bee-bitten plants and unbitten plants. Bitten plants bloomed in 17 days; the un-bitten took an average of 33 days to bloom.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/hungry-bumblebees-make-plants-flower-early-cutting-holes-their-leaves

471

r/todayilearned • Posted by u/BillerBueen 8 hours ago ( npr.org )

TIL the original 1954 Godzilla's roar was made by covering a leather glove in resin and dragging it across a double bass.

https://www.npr.org/2014/05/18/312839612/whats-in-a-roar-crafting-godzillas-iconic-sound

46.7K

r/todayilearned • Posted by u/mugdays 1 day ago ( en.wikipedia.org )

TIL Basque (a language spoken near the Spain/France border) is a language isolate; not only is it NOT a Romance language, it's not even an Indo-European language. It is the only surviving Pre-Indo-European language in Western Europe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_language

506

r/todayilearned • Posted by u/CletusVanDamnit 10 hours ago ( johnsonstring.com )

TIL that there's no difference between a fiddle and a violin. They're the exact same instrument; the difference is the type of music being played, with "violin" being used for classical music and "fiddle" associated with folk and bluegrass.

https://www.johnsonstring.com/violins-facts/fiddle-vs-violin.htm

1.18K

r/todayilearned • Posted by u/HydrolicKrane 15 hours ago ( en.wikipedia.org )

TIL Already famous, Agatha Christie went on archaeological expeditions to Iraq and Syria. That experiences is reflected in novels such as Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile, and Appointment with Death

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agatha_Christie#Archaeology

3.71K

r/todayilearned • Posted by u/DystopianAdvocate 21 hours ago ( sheknows.com )

TIL That hockey legend Wayne Gretzky had a cameo on the soap opera The Young and the Restless. As a huge soap opera fan in 1981, Gretzky made a cameo on the daytime show as a mafia boss. His one line was, “I’m Wayne from the Edmonton operation.”

https://www.sheknows.com/entertainment/slideshow/4715/oddest-soap-opera-cameos/

197

r/todayilearned • Posted by u/TheGreatSilverFang 6 hours ago ( hrp.org.uk )

TIL about Princess Sophia Duleep Singh, who was a prominent suffragette in the United Kingdom. She was the daughter of Duleep Singh, the last Maharaja of Punjab. She played a leading role in the Women's Tax Resistance League and was instrumental in winning women their right to vote.

https://www.hrp.org.uk/hampton-court-palace/history-and-stories/sophia-duleep-singh/#gs.visq3y

132

r/todayilearned • Posted by u/bigboyempi 5 hours ago ( en.wikipedia.org )

TIL that Peter Pan's copyright was donated to a children's hospital in London.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Ormond_Street_Hospital

8.53K

r/todayilearned • Posted by u/Kepler1053 1 day ago ( en.wikipedia.org )

TIL That famed science fiction author Isaac Asimov died of complications from AIDS, after contracting HIV from a blood transfusion. His family hid the cause of his death due to the stigma attached to AIDS in the early 1990s

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Asimov#Illness_and_death

1.13K

r/todayilearned • Posted by u/electricp0ww0w 17 hours ago ( en.wikipedia.org )

TIL in 1996, Russia launched a Mars Rover called "Mars96". It crashed back to earth after 2 days, containing plutonium-238 fuel which would have survived the impact. Nobody ever bothered to look for it, and it's believed to just be lying around the Andes mountains.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_96

696

r/todayilearned • Posted by u/catjugglinpimp 14 hours ago ( en.wikipedia.org )

TIL - In 2014, Stephen Collins, the actor who played Eric Camden on 7th Heaven TV Show as well as Commander Decker on Star Trek the Motion Picture, confessed to diddling children and then moved to Iowa to live in seclusion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Collins

92

r/todayilearned • Posted by u/Leoz_13 3 hours ago ( britannica.com )

TIL: Louis XIV became king at the age of four; however, he was initially under the guardianship of his mother. Louis XIV was given the nicknames "Sun King" or "The Great". When he died on September 1, 1715, after 72 years of kingship, he was one of the longest reigning monarchs in modern history.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Louis-XIV-king-of-France

56

r/todayilearned • Posted by u/LogicBomb69 1 hour ago ( en.wikipedia.org )

TIL of Nancy Hart, a heroine of the American revolutionary war celebrated for repeatedly outsmarting and killing loyalist soldiers in Georgia.She is best known for an incident where she singlehandedly incapacitated 6 Tory soldiers who walked into her home and demanded that she cook a turkey for them

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Hart

258

r/todayilearned • Posted by u/Centurion_83 10 hours ago ( en.wikipedia.org )

TIL that in just 4 years, Glenn Miller (of 1940s big band music) scored 16 number-one records and 69 top ten hits—more than Elvis Presley (38 top 10s) and the Beatles (33 top 10s) did in their whole careers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Miller

101

r/todayilearned • Posted by u/missvh 5 hours ago ( nbcnews.com )

TIL Nile Crocodiles dig the deepest burrows of all known animals, up to 39 feet deep.

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/weird-science/holes-ground-could-be-our-longest-lasting-legacy-n192036

229

r/todayilearned • Posted by u/CelebDrawChann 10 hours ago ( usa.oceana.org )

TIL The Great White Shark has the ability to evert their stomachs. It is their version of throwing up by pushing their stomachs out through their mouths. Sharks do it when they need to get something out of their stomach that they can’t digest, like hard bone or a license plate.

https://usa.oceana.org/blog/shark-fact-friday-14-iron-stomach#

142

r/todayilearned • Posted by u/TTV_NaNiBTW 8 hours ago ( nbcnews.com )

TIL that Dr. Heimlich, who invented the Heimlich Maneuver, saved an 87 year old woman choking on her food next to him

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna581666

875

r/todayilearned • Posted by u/Bill_Gates_2020 18 hours ago ( mentalfloss.com )

TIL The "New England Vampire Panic" was an event in the 19th century where people thought that "consumption"(Tuberculosis) was actually the result of vampires. It got to the point where people would dig up those who died of Tuberculosis and stake them through the heart.

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/87985/how-tuberculosis-inspired-19th-century-new-england-vampire-panic