r/todayilearned • u/ThisSchmitter • 6h ago

TIL that Madonna once leaked her own album on file sharing services but every track was a loop of her swearing at the downloaders. Hackers then took over her official site and posted the actual album.

news.bbc.co.uk

23.8k Upvotes

422 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Warcraft_Fan • 5h ago

TIL Bloodworms has 4 fangs made of copper, probably the only lifeform on Earth with natural copper teeth

en.wikipedia.org

7.2k Upvotes

225 comments

r/todayilearned • u/tyrion2024 • 6h ago

TIL Eminem came up with the hook for his hit "My Name Is" within the first few minutes of the first studio session that he and Dr. Dre ever had together.

unilad.com

5.6k Upvotes

264 comments

r/todayilearned • u/kurgan2800 • 12h ago

TIL George Washington was called "American Fabius" for using the same strategy as Quintus Fabius Maximus Verrucosus Cunctator (the delayer) in the 2nd Punic War against Hannibal. Avoid big pitched battles and weaken the enemy through attrition

en.wikipedia.org

11.1k Upvotes

474 comments

r/todayilearned • u/stoictrader03 • 7h ago

TIL that humidifier disinfectants in South Korea caused 1,814 confirmed deaths and an estimated 18,000 total deaths, with 58% mortality in children and 53% in adults requiring lung transplants, before the chemicals were banned in 2011.

en.wikipedia.org

3.2k Upvotes

127 comments

r/todayilearned • u/altrightobserver • 3h ago

TIL that John Lennon and George Harrison were introduced to psychedelics after a guest at a party they were both attending spiked their drinks without their knowledge. Later that night, while in the elevator at a club, Harrison and Lennon thought it was on fire, becoming “hot and hysterical.”

en.wikipedia.org

1.1k Upvotes

71 comments

r/todayilearned • u/SwordfishEither2516 • 6h ago

TIL that China’s Terracotta Army, thousands of life-sized clay soldiers buried with the first emperor, was accidentally discovered in 1974 by farmers digging a well, leading to one of the greatest archaeological finds ever.

en.wikipedia.org

1.6k Upvotes

51 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Spirited_Manager_831 • 5h ago

TIL that the Manchu queue hairstyle was used by the Qing dynasty as a mandatory loyalty test, where men were forced to choose between shaving their foreheads or being executed

thechinaproject.com

991 Upvotes

123 comments

r/todayilearned • u/tyrion2024 • 6h ago

TIL 8 of the 10 most pirated series in 2024 were anime.

screenrant.com

1.3k Upvotes

302 comments

r/todayilearned • u/hariseldon2 • 14h ago

TIL Greenland got its name purely for marketing reasons by Erik the Red who wanted to attract settlers to his new settlement there

en.wikipedia.org

4.5k Upvotes

38 comments

r/todayilearned • u/FossilDS • 8h ago

TIL that Egypt had their own version of the Vietnam War in the 1960s: In the North Yemen Civil War, a small Egyptian intervention spiraled into an endless quagmire against royalist guerillas which ended up killing 26,000 Egyptian servicemen.

en.wikipedia.org

1.1k Upvotes

42 comments

r/todayilearned • u/blankblank • 5h ago

TIL that celebrating birthdays was originally a pagan tradition that early Christians did not follow.

cbsnews.com

550 Upvotes

132 comments

r/todayilearned • u/TNSasquatch77 • 23h ago

TIL some people with severe dementia or major brain damage briefly regain full mental clarity shortly before death, a phenomenon known as terminal lucidity that has no confirmed neurological explanation.

my.clevelandclinic.org

35.4k Upvotes

712 comments

r/todayilearned • u/MrMojoFomo • 8h ago

TIL of St. Clair's defeat, or the Battle of Wabash. On November 4th, 1791, a war party of over 1,000 Miamis and other Native Americans attacked and defeated a force of about 1,000 American soldiers. 24 Americans escaped alive. It was the most decisive defeat of an American military force in history

en.wikipedia.org

696 Upvotes

39 comments

r/todayilearned • u/0__o- • 11h ago

TIL your cerebellum—though only about 10 % of your brain’s total volume—contains nearly half of its neurons.

my.clevelandclinic.org

771 Upvotes

14 comments

r/todayilearned • u/TianRB • 1d ago

TIL A man named Cincinnatus was given absolute power to save Rome from an invasion; he did so in just 16 days, then immediately resigned and went back to his farm.

en.wikipedia.org

41.7k Upvotes

1.3k comments

r/todayilearned • u/Capital-Albatross-17 • 23h ago

TIL Swiss presidents are elected for a term length of only 1 year(Unlimited non-consecutive one-year terms). With the first day in office being 1st of January and the last day of office being 31st of December of that year.

en.wikipedia.org

5.0k Upvotes

122 comments

r/todayilearned • u/thatshygirl06 • 1d ago

TIL most missing children are runaways, and 99% of abducted children are taken by relatives, typically a noncustodial father.In response to these statistics, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has reversed their campaign focusing on "stranger danger"

en.wikipedia.org

16.1k Upvotes

697 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Kikuchiy0 • 1d ago

TIL tennis balls are terrible for your dogs teeth

akc.org

8.5k Upvotes

352 comments

r/todayilearned • u/EasternPotential3952 • 2h ago

TIL that if you have previously provided a sample to a marrow registry such as “Gift of Life” or “NMDP” you can request your HLA type results from them, which can provide some useful info about your likelihood of developing certain medical conditions and disease

my.nmdp.org

70 Upvotes

3 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Sebastianlim • 11h ago

TIL that in 2018, an escalator in Rome suddenly sped up, causing twenty-four people, who had been going to see a football game, to be injured. It was later discovered that the escalator's brakes and other safety systems had been improperly maintained and tampered with.

en.wikipedia.org

352 Upvotes

17 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Alternative-Win4058 • 8h ago

TIL that the Oxford English Dictionary project was expected to take about a decade, but the first edition took around 70 years to complete

oed.com

202 Upvotes

18 comments

r/todayilearned • u/BDWG4EVA • 16h ago

TIL the actual train and bus used for the famous crash scene in the movie "The Fugitive" remain on the banks of the Great Smoky Railroad in North Carolina for tourists to see

theglovetrotters.com

769 Upvotes

33 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Better-Carob-2953 • 23h ago

TIL that Kim Jong-il was born in the Soviet Union under the name Yuri Irsenovich Kim, as the USSR required Russian-style names in official birth records.

en.wikipedia.org

2.5k Upvotes

83 comments

r/todayilearned • u/GoodMornEveGoodNight • 21h ago

TIL brewing tea can remove lead from water

news.northwestern.edu

1.3k Upvotes

64 comments

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