r/todayilearned
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u/Bl4ckb100d
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5h ago
TIL George Lucas not only gave his blessing to make Spaceballs, he also handed the movie over to his effects company, Industrial Light and Magic, to provide the space effects and postproduction.
cbr.comr/todayilearned • u/kinbeat • 10h ago
TIL of the "fountain of tits" in Treviso, North Italy, a XVI century topless statue of a woman sprinkling water from each nipple. During celebrations, it spouts red and white wine, free to drink.
en.wikipedia.orgr/todayilearned • u/uninhabited • 5h ago
TIL: The British built over 100 concentration camps during the Second Boer War (1899–1902) in South Africa. Over 26,000 woman & children died in these camps from starvation & disease
en.wikipedia.orgr/todayilearned • u/That_Charming_Otter • 4h ago
TIL: As far back as 1872, despite practically no women being allowed to vote, Victoria Woodhull of the Equal Rights Party became the first woman nominated for a US Presidential election. Frederick Douglass, a black abolitionist, was even chosen as her running mate
nps.govr/todayilearned • u/Smart_Emu_9084 • 15h ago
TIL that in central Italy, there is a fountain that flows red wine 24-hours a day. It is free to everyone, except for drunkards and louts .
eater.comr/todayilearned • u/vancouver_reader • 13h ago
TIL Dr Seuss' wife, Helen, encouraged him to give up his idea of teaching English and to concentrate on his "fabulous collection" of fanciful animal drawings. Her strategy worked and Dr Seuss published his first children's book in 1937
wikitree.comr/todayilearned • u/_r0b_the_b0b_ • 19h ago
TIL that the Ignalina nuclear power plant located in eastern Lithuania is identical to the Chernobyl plant in Pripyat. The plant remained operational until 2009 and was used as the set for the HBO Chernobyl miniseries.
en.wikipedia.orgr/todayilearned • u/thewickerstan • 3h ago
TiL that upon finishing the sci fi film "Devil Girls From Mars", a then 12 year old Octavia Butler concluded that she could write a better story. Butler went on to win multiple Hugo and Nebula awards and became the first sci-fi writer to receive a MacArthur Fellowship.
en.wikipedia.orgr/todayilearned • u/_r0b_the_b0b_ • 16h ago
TIL that the United States has offered to purchase Greenland from Denmark twice, once in 1946 and again in 2019 due to its strategic location in the Arctic, the U.S. also occupied the island during WW2 from 1940-45 after the fall of Denmark and constructed Thule Air Base.
en.wikipedia.orgr/todayilearned • u/LiveFreeDieRepeat • 10h ago
TIL that the world’s longest golf course is in the scrubland of Australia, it’s 848 miles long and has many unique hazards
news.bbc.co.ukr/todayilearned • u/ralphbernardo • 14h ago
TIL that during the American Civil War, the Union regularly cracked the Confederacy's coded messages because the Confederacy relied on a limited number of key phrases for encrypting their messages, one of which was "Complete Victory".
en.wikipedia.orgr/todayilearned • u/suscribednowhere • 3h ago
TIL that 3% of patients chemically paralyzed and put on a ventilator become aware. Due to the paralytic leaving them unable to communicate, they are forced to lie motionless for the duration of the time on the vent. Patients would often become traumatized as a result.
annemergmed.comr/todayilearned • u/HotConcrete • 23h ago
TIL about goose pulling: the practice of tying a greased live goose to a pole. Riders on horseback then attempt to grab the bird by the neck in order to pull the head off as they gallop by
en.wikipedia.orgr/todayilearned • u/MenitoBussolini • 4h ago
TIL of Wenceslao Moguel, a Mexican soldier fighting for Pancho Villa who was captured and sentenced to death without a trial in 1915. He was shot 9 times in the body and once in the head but managed to survive and live (disfigured) until 1976.
ripleys.comr/todayilearned • u/delano1998 • 15h ago
TIL In 1974 at a Canadian army training base in Quebec, cadets were being trained to handle discarded explosives. A cadet asked one of the instructors if he could pull the pin on the grenade, and the instructor told him it was safe. It exploded, killing 6 cadets and injuring 65 others.
thestar.comr/todayilearned • u/Hamsternoir • 2h ago
TIL John Lennon loved a Beatles parody (The Rutles) by Monty Python's Eric Idle so much he refused to hand back the preview tape
en.wikipedia.orgr/todayilearned • u/dontflyaway • 4h ago
TIL a failed marketing gimmick by Marlboro killed and injured multiple people in Poland. Sales reps. would distribute free cigarettes and light them with easy-lit matchsticks. The matchsticks were lit by pretty much anything they touched and caused a deadly car fire on one occasion.
en.wikipedia.orgr/todayilearned • u/sonofabutch • 3h ago
TIL A “Keynesian beauty contest” describes why certain commodities are traded not for what they are intrinsically worth, but what others believe they are worth, creating an iteration of valuation belief — like a beauty contest where the judge chooses a winner by guessing the audience’s choice.
en.wikipedia.orgr/todayilearned • u/TornadoWolf • 16h ago
TIL while its location has never been set in DC canon and is based on NYC, Gotham City is traditionally set in New Jersey.
en.wikipedia.orgr/todayilearned • u/Paracortex • 3h ago
TIL that Florida has almost 8,500 miles of shoreline, which if made into a straight line would be more than 1/3 the circumference of Earth.
phenomenalflorida.comr/todayilearned • u/mafen • 10h ago
TIL the the song “The Way” by Fastball is based on a real elderly couple from Salado, TX who went missing in June 1997 and later found dead at the bottom of a ravine near Hot Springs, AR a couple weeks later.
youtu.ber/todayilearned • u/EzioKenway977 • 1d ago
TIL that in 1961, Thomas Monaghan got half-ownership of "Domino's", now one of the largest pizza companies in the world. All he had to give in return was his used Volkswagen Beetle car.
en.wikipedia.orgr/todayilearned • u/_r0b_the_b0b_ • 19h ago
TIL that NASA planned to send astronauts to Mars in 1981 using Nerva nuclear rockets but congress cut NASA's funding and Nixon cancelled the Nerva project entirely in 1973, causing Nasa to focus on the development of the Space Shuttle instead
en.wikipedia.orgr/todayilearned • u/RandomChunks37 • 2h ago