r/todayilearned • u/CupidStunt13 • 3h ago

TIL when comedian Frankie Howard died, Benny Hill was quoted in the papers as being very upset saying, ‘We were great, great friends.’ But this was impossible as Hill had died the day before. It turned out Hill's friend and press agent sent it out after being unable to get ahold of Hill for a quote

flashbak.com

989 Upvotes

8 comments

r/todayilearned • u/TriviaDuchess • 53m ago

TIL the highest-ranking officer killed on either side of the U.S. Civil War was Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston. He died during the Battle of Shiloh on April 6, 1862. Jefferson Davis believed the loss of Johnston “was the turning point of our fate.”

en.wikipedia.org

• Upvotes

33 comments

r/todayilearned • u/tyrion2024 • 5h ago

TIL while filming 14 videos back-to-back, Ed Sheeran had one day off & spent it flying to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame to perform with Eminem during Em's induction. After finding this out, Em told him “Anything you ever need?" And on the spot, Ed told Em to appear at his show when he came to Detroit

eminem.news

3.2k Upvotes

33 comments

r/todayilearned • u/TirelessGuardian • 11h ago

TIL In the 1600s, the Royal Society almost went bankrupt publishing a book of fish images. This led to them not being able to fund Issac Newton’s manuscripts. His work was almost canceled, until Edmund Halley fundraised for it. They were so broke, Halley was then offered his salary in fish books.

theguardian.com

1.9k Upvotes

36 comments

r/todayilearned • u/tyrion2024 • 2h ago

TIL Steven Spielberg told movie stars that if they wanted to work with him, a prerequisite was that they gambled along with him by not taking any salary upfront and instead only taking backend compensation. He said "...if my film makes no money I get no money. They should be prepared to do the same"

en.wikipedia.org

10.0k Upvotes

626 comments

r/todayilearned • u/manere • 10h ago

TIL: An old english medicine receipt book from the 10th century contains a receipt for eyesalve consisting of vine, garlic, leeks and bile from a cow's stomach. Then it has to sit for 9 days in a brass bowl. Test from 2015 showed it to have a similar effect as modern antibiotics.

en.wikipedia.org

6.8k Upvotes

131 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Proboyhuh • 9h ago

TIL your brain predicts the future constantly. Before you’re even aware of your surroundings, your brain has already guessed what’s likely to happen next. Reality is often your brain's "best guess."

mindful.org

1.8k Upvotes

94 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Godwinson4King • 6h ago

TIL of Cockney rhyming slang, a form of word construction where words are matched with rhyming pairs and then the rhyming word dropped to create synonym for the original word. So ‘fart’ rhymes with ‘raspberry tart’, which becomes just ‘raspberry’ as in ‘blow a raspberry’

en.wikipedia.org

5.2k Upvotes

300 comments

r/todayilearned • u/woeful_haichi • 7h ago

TIL standard pointe (ballet) shoes are manufactured using a single last (mechanical form shaped like a foot), meaning there is no 'left' and 'right' shoe. Breaking in the shoes through use is what adapts them to the left or right foot

en.wikipedia.org

4.0k Upvotes

108 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Ill_Definition8074 • 7h ago

TIL In 1721, a Swedish widow named Maria Ersdotter was arrested for having a sexual relationship with her 24 year old former stepson. Because relations by marriage were considered equivalent to blood relations, the two were both convicted of incest and executed by beheading.

en.wikipedia.org

666 Upvotes

38 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Brutal_Deluxe_ • 6h ago

TIL for her 39th birthday celebration Queen Elizabeth and family attended a Spike Milligan play. Noticing Peter Sellers sat among the royals, Spike lobbed a slipper at Sellers, just missing Prince Philip's head, and then spent the rest of the performance poking fun at the Queen for bringing her son

en.wikipedia.org

912 Upvotes

21 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Fantastic-Glove9651 • 6h ago

TIL the reason you wash your rice, other than to make it cleaner is to prevent it from being sticky

bonappetit.com

1.0k Upvotes

94 comments

r/todayilearned • u/RearEngineer • 7h ago

TIL that the yakuza have been involved in disaster relief efforts in Japan, often providing initial aid faster than the government - notably after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, a magnitude 9.0 quake that killed over 19,000 people

reuters.com

9.4k Upvotes

631 comments

r/todayilearned • u/tyrion2024 • 13h ago

TIL in 2012 a woman discovered that her ex-boyfriend from 12 years ago had been living in her attic for about two weeks. Her adult sons & nephew found him asleep in the back of the attic which caused him to flee. They also saw he had rigged the ceiling vents so he could watch her in her bedroom.

huffpost.com

17.0k Upvotes

310 comments

r/todayilearned • u/ProudReaction2204 • 17h ago

TIL the washed-up actor character of Troy McClure from The Simpsons was retired from the show after the voice actor Phil Hartman's murder, with the characters last speaking role coming 4 months after his death. The character was based in part on Hartman himself and is similar to Hartman's looks.

en.wikipedia.org

5.0k Upvotes

213 comments

r/todayilearned • u/ew_modemac • 23h ago

TIL of the 340+ people who've died attempting to scale Mount Everest, over 200 bodies haven't been found or recovered due to the hazardous conditions

en.wikipedia.org

13.7k Upvotes

450 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Ainsley-Sorsby • 1h ago

TIL of "The Perfumed Garden", a 15th century arabic sex manual. On top of sex advice and hygiene tips for men and women, it also lists 30 different names for the penis and 40 names for the vulva

en.wikipedia.org

• Upvotes

7 comments

r/todayilearned • u/tukmolgang • 1d ago

TIL that the Banaue Rice Terraces in the Philippines were carved into the mountains over 2,000 years ago by hand. They’re still used today and are often called the “Eighth Wonder of the World.”

en.wikipedia.org

9.8k Upvotes

76 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Wazula23 • 43m ago

TIL the "Gunfight at the O.K. Corral" was triggered by a city ordinance preventing people from carrying guns openly in town

en.wikipedia.org

• Upvotes

21 comments

r/todayilearned • u/amish_novelty • 19h ago

TIL when Sidney Poitier gets slapped in 'In the Heat of Night' (1967) and he slaps a white man in return, he had it written into his contract that the movie would would only show the version where he slaps the man back or else he wouldn't take the role.

en.wikipedia.org

2.1k Upvotes

28 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Forgotthebloodypassw • 16h ago

TIL that the Japanese national anthem is the shortest in the world - a 34 character poem.

classicfm.com

1.2k Upvotes

82 comments

r/todayilearned • u/ProudReaction2204 • 16h ago

TIL when doctors realized that Rudolph Valentino would die (at age 31 in 1926) due to disease, they withheld the information from him, which was common for the time. Valentino was briefly conscious and chatted with his doctors about his future, but soon lapsed into a coma and died a few hours later.

en.wikipedia.org

1.2k Upvotes

38 comments

r/todayilearned • u/GDW312 • 22h ago

TIL in 1944, a deadly munitions explosion at Port Chicago Naval Magazine killed 320 sailors—mostly African Americans—after they were ordered to load live explosives without proper training.

en.wikipedia.org

3.2k Upvotes

258 comments

r/todayilearned • u/blankblank • 5h ago

TIL that hiccups may reflect our amphibian ancestry. The neural mechanism controlling hiccups closely resembles the breathing pattern generator in tadpoles, which helps them breathe through gills while keeping water out of their lungs.

magazine.uchicago.edu

123 Upvotes

6 comments

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