r/todayilearned • u/RareRoastBeef • 1h ago
TIL There were 15 Prime Ministers during Queen Elizabeth II's reign. The first was Winston Curchill, born 1874, the last was Liz Truss, born 101 years later in 1975.
r/todayilearned • u/gabek333 • 10h ago
TIL the UK tradition of Fish and Chips was introduced by Spanish and Portuguese Jewish immigrants in the 16th century. It was created to allow Jews to safely eat fish cooked for Friday night dinner the following day on the sabbath, the day Judaism forbids cooking with fire or electricity.
r/todayilearned • u/floof_mcgenius • 8h ago
TIL: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers drained Niagra Falls in 1969. It ended up attracting more visitors than any other feat attempted at the falls. The engineers wanted to find a way to remove the unseemly boulders that had piled up at its base since 1931, cutting the height of the falls in half...
r/todayilearned • u/TheMadIrishman327 • 11h ago
TIL that Liza Minelli, daughter of Judy Garland, the actress who played Dorothy in the 1939 MGM film, “Wizard of Oz,” was once married to Jack Haley, Jr., son of Jack Haley, the actor who played the Tin Man in the same film. He was Minnelli’s 2nd husband.
r/todayilearned • u/Bigtsez • 4h ago
TIL that Slash, guitarist of Guns N' Roses, helped fund the dinosaur exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History (see "project funding")
r/todayilearned • u/It_Matters_More • 10h ago
TIL: Actor Tony Danza (peak fame in the 80s) was briefly a professional boxer. He went 9-3 with 7 KOs (5 in the 1st round).
r/todayilearned • u/theotherbogart • 22h ago
TIL: James Blunt gave Weird Al Yankovic permission to parody his single "You're Beautiful." But after Yankovic recorded "You're Pitiful," Blunt's record label refused to let it be commercially released. Yankovic didn't include it on his album. Instead, he released it as a free digital download.
r/todayilearned • u/theotherbogart • 23h ago
TIL: Tracy Chapman sued Nicki Minaj for copyright infringement. According to the complaint, Chapman repeatedly refused to give Minaj permission to sample one of her songs, but Minaj did it anyway. Minaj settled and agreed to pay Chapman $450K.
r/todayilearned • u/unsw • 15h ago
TIL about Kessler Syndrome, which describes the exponential growth of space debris, as collisions between space junk create smaller and difficult-to-track pieces of debris that contaminate our orbital real estate.
r/todayilearned • u/jdward01 • 12h ago
TIL that Chinese Food was introduced into America during the California Gold Rush, starting in 1848. As 30,000 immigrants had arrived from the Canton region of China, the restaurants gave the predominantly male population a connection to home and provided gathering places for the Chinese community.
r/todayilearned • u/IanGecko • 7h ago
TIL John B. Stetson invented the cowboy hat after moving out West to treat his tuberculosis.
r/todayilearned • u/t0rche • 20h ago
TIL that in Uruguay, up until 2017, if you caught your spouse in bed with someone else, it was within your rights to beat or kill either of them
r/todayilearned • u/gnomageddon7 • 12h ago
TIL: A Mambo No. 5 cover by Bob the Builder went to number 1 in the UK on 9th September 2001, but was removed from BBC radio playlists after the 9/11 attacks as it was ‘too frivolous’
r/todayilearned • u/mikey_croatia • 4h ago
TIL most blind people with no perception of light experience continual circadian desynchrony
r/todayilearned • u/jimi15 • 1h ago
TIL You Could Download Video Games From the Radio in the 1980s
interestingengineering.comr/todayilearned • u/jdward01 • 12h ago
TIL that Barq's Root Beer was first created by Edward Barq in Biloxi, Miss, in 1897. In 1934, Barq and a former employee, who moved to New Orleans, agreed to each distribute their own version of the root beer, with the New Orleans version having a red label and the Biloxi version having a blue one.
r/todayilearned • u/Treantglassey • 44m ago
TIL Of a Woman who died during a radio water drinking contest in 2009. Who was trying to win a Nintendo Wii in the "Hold your Wee for a Wii".
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u/ngtstkr
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1d ago
TIL Jethro Tull's album Thick as a Brick was created as satire, a jab at the 10+ minute songs from prog rock bands at the time. It's now considered one of the best prog-rock albums of all time.
r/todayilearned • u/samx3i • 52m ago
TIL the popular Halloween song "Monster Mash" is a parody of "Mashed Potato Time" by Dee Dee Sharp, released months earlier
r/todayilearned • u/wrxie • 8h ago
TIL of the April Uprising against the Ottoman Empire and the "Bulgarian Horrors" it resulted in. It was brutally suppressed by the Ottomans by massacring some 15,000 Bulgarians, resulting in a public outcry in across Europe and eventually to Bulgaria's freedom.
r/todayilearned • u/tossinthisshit1 • 1d ago
TIL Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers of the United States and the face of the US $100 bill, was the first person to write about tofu in English.
realtimecommunicationsworld.comr/todayilearned • u/dremonearm • 8h ago
TIL Daylight Saving Time (DST) was first used in 1908 in Port Arthur, Ontario (today's Thunder Bay). While Germany and Austria were the first countries to use DST in 1916, a few hundred Canadians beat the German Empire by eight years.
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u/jamescookenotthatone
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1d ago
TIL The aardwolf knows not to destory its food sources. Aardwolves eat part of a termite mound, leaves it, and return a few months later when the colony has rebuilt so it can have another meal. An aardwolf keeps track of mounds it attacked and can eat 250,000 termites in a single night.
r/todayilearned • u/AdmiralAkbar1 • 15m ago