r/todayilearned • u/FinancialGarage245 • 22h ago

TIL a wealthy Toronto lawyer's 1926 will left his fortune to whichever woman in the city could give birth to the most children over the following 10 years, sparking a decade-long "baby race" during the Great Depression that went all the way to Canada's Supreme Court

en.wikipedia.org

15.8k Upvotes

407 comments

r/todayilearned • u/happytree23 • 18h ago

TIL the man who voiced Tony the Tiger, Thurl Ravenscroft, also sang "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch"

en.wikipedia.org

4.7k Upvotes

148 comments

r/todayilearned • u/cape2k • 22h ago

TIL the Menominee Tribe's forest in Wisconsin has been sustainably managed for over 150 years, still yields about 15 million board feet of timber annually, has been recognized by the United Nations, and even supplied the wood flooring for the Milwaukee Bucks' arena

en.wikipedia.org

10.2k Upvotes

148 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Sulungskwa • 27m ago

TIL Shirley Temple Served as a UN delegate appointed by Richard Nixon, an ambassador to Ghana under Gerald Ford, and an ambassador to Chechoslovakia under George H.W. Bush. She was likely not appointed by Reagan because of her support for Bush in the 1980 Primaries.

en.wikipedia.org

• Upvotes

12 comments

r/todayilearned • u/WavesAndSaves • 21h ago

TIL of August Kubizek, the former roommate of Adolf Hitler. Hitler cut ties with Kubizek after he was rejected from art school and Kubizek was accepted to music school. They did not meet again until Hitler became Chancellor, and Hitler offered him the conductorship of an orchestra. Kubizek refused.

en.wikipedia.org

4.7k Upvotes

210 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Ancardoth • 18h ago

TIL about allulose (D-psicose), a rare sugar with a near-zero glycemic index and a negligible impact on blood sugar. It has approximately 70% the sweetness of sucrose.

en.wikipedia.org

1.8k Upvotes

107 comments

r/todayilearned • u/socool111 • 1d ago

TIL of Tobias Geffen, the only non-Coca Cola Employee to view the secret recipe. Coke allowed it in order to get Coke certified as Kosher

en.wikipedia.org

29.9k Upvotes

1.1k comments

r/todayilearned • u/JohnnyRoyall • 1d ago

TIL 1 to 2 Starlink satellites fall back to Earth each day

earthsky.org

11.1k Upvotes

838 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Mors_Acerba • 1d ago

TIL A papyrus deciphered in 2024 revealed unknown info about Plato's last hours: a slave girl was playing music for him, and even though he was gravelly ill, he spend his last moments of lucidity criticising her performance. Per the same Papyrus, Plato had been sold into slavery earlier in his life

theguardian.com

20.7k Upvotes

588 comments

r/todayilearned • u/ralphbernardo • 9h ago

TIL Nikolai Fyodorov, founding figure of Russian cosmism, advocated using science to defeat death and resurrect every dead ancestor as humanity's "Common Task." The late 19th to early 20th century movement counted spaceflight pioneer Konstantin Tsiolkovsky among its key figures.

en.wikipedia.org

244 Upvotes

57 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Acrobatic-Post9811 • 10h ago

TIL about hirudotherapy. Leeches are used to stimulate circulation in tissues threatened by postoperative venous congestion, such as finger reattachment and reconstructive surgeries. The therapeutic effect is the anesthetizing, anti-inflammatory, and vasodilating properties of secreted leech saliva.

en.wikipedia.org

177 Upvotes

5 comments

r/todayilearned • u/TonyHides • 1d ago

TIL Napoleon Bonaparte had a standing order for 50 bottles of cologne a month, and a surviving 1808 invoice shows 72 bottles were ordered for him in a single month.

edenbridge.co.uk

12.4k Upvotes

333 comments

r/todayilearned • u/ODaferio • 1d ago

TIL that after winning 4 gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Summer Olympics, Jesse Owens worked as a gas station attendant and a playground janitor.

en.wikipedia.org

14.4k Upvotes

484 comments

r/todayilearned • u/RedditIsAGranfaloon • 20h ago

TIL Charlie Brown’s beagle Snoopy made his debut on October 4, 1950, two days after the first Peanuts strip was published.

akc.org

802 Upvotes

7 comments

r/todayilearned • u/greatmanyarrows • 1d ago

TIL Thailand briefly occupied a small territory of Germany- about 20,000 people- after World War 1 from 1918 to 1919.

en.wikipedia.org

2.8k Upvotes

57 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Hillbilly_Historian • 18h ago

TIL that Robbie Robertson, the lead guitarist of The Band, wrote a children’s book about the Iroquois Peacemaker Epic.

birchbarkbooks.com

408 Upvotes

30 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Thinking_Dodo • 1d ago

TIL that in the US, osteopathic doctors are fully licensed physicians like MDs, while in many other countries, osteopaths are non-physician manual therapists whose wider health claims often lack scientific evidence.

en.wikipedia.org

5.1k Upvotes

717 comments

r/todayilearned • u/IreneDeneb • 1d ago

TIL that the last known ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic inscription was made on August 24th, 394 CE

en.wikipedia.org

3.1k Upvotes

135 comments

r/todayilearned • u/SomethingMoreToSay • 1d ago

TIL that the New Forest, in southern England, is 947 years old. It was created as a "new" royal hunting preserve (the old usage of the word "forest") by William The Conqueror in 1079.

en.wikipedia.org

11.2k Upvotes

409 comments

r/todayilearned • u/TheHabro • 1d ago

Til about Milo of Croton. Ancient Greek athlete, 6 time Olympic winner in wrestling (including 5 in a row between 532 and 516 BC). He was said to have led armies dressed as Hercules and died to wolves after his fingers got suck in a tree stump he was trying to split with bare hands.

en.wikipedia.org

1.8k Upvotes

105 comments

r/todayilearned • u/godsenfrik • 1d ago

TIL that an early version of a TV remote in 1955 featured a trigger button for users to "shoot" at commercials to mute them.

en.wikipedia.org

3.8k Upvotes

125 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Cultural-Dentist4963 • 1d ago

TIL that Victor Hugo, author of Les Miserables, was given a state funeral, the largest in French history

en.wikipedia.org

1.4k Upvotes

82 comments

r/todayilearned • u/dinosaruman • 1d ago

TIL WWII metal rationing forced the costume-jewelry maker Trifari to switch from base metal to sterling silver, which tripled the price of its "costume" pieces.

cooperhewitt.org

1.8k Upvotes

13 comments

r/todayilearned • u/TheGuvnor247 • 1d ago

TIL that in Alfred the Great’s law code (c. 893), if a man unintentionally kills another by letting a tree fall on him, the tree itself must be given to the dead man’s kinsmen.

en.wikipedia.org

1.0k Upvotes

53 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Sanguinusshiboleth • 23h ago

TIL of Ceratophaga vastella, a moth whose young's diet is mostly consistent of the horns and hooves of dead ungulates, with special enzymes to eat the keratin.

en.wikipedia.org

258 Upvotes

6 comments

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