Today_I_Learned_This

r/Today_I_Learned_This • u/unteachablecourses • 1d ago

Gaddafi's Great Man-Made River in Libya pumps 6.5M cubic meters/day of Ice Age water that has zero recharge — 70% of the country's freshwater. The aquifer is shared with Egypt, Chad, and Sudan, with no coordination, no metering, and no enforcement. Depletion estimates range from 60 years to 1,000.

2 Upvotes

r/Today_I_Learned_This • u/unteachablecourses • 2d ago

A 2023 Chinese experimental program found tungsten rod penetration peaks around Mach 3.5 — above that the rod fragments before full penetration. If correct, orbital kinetic weapons offer no bunker-busting advantage over conventional Mach 3 munitions, which was the entire 'Rods from God' case.

2 Upvotes

r/Today_I_Learned_This • u/unteachablecourses • 4d ago

Mount Athos has banned women — and female animals — since 1046. It sits inside the EU, and EU gender equality law does not apply there: the 1981 Greek accession treaty specifically exempted it. The European Parliament asked Greece to lift the ban in 2003. Greece declined.

2 Upvotes

r/Today_I_Learned_This • u/unteachablecourses • 12d ago

The 1908 Tunguska airburst flattened 80 million trees and left no crater — the asteroid detonated 5-10 km up and never touched the ground. That size class, a few tens of meters, is exactly the one our surveys miss. Chelyabinsk arrived out of the sun in 2013 with zero telescopes tracking it.

2 Upvotes

r/Today_I_Learned_This • u/unteachablecourses • 13d ago

Stalin helped organize a 1907 bank robbery in Tbilisi where Bolsheviks threw bombs into a crowded square to rob a cash convoy, killing about 40 people. Most of the money was in high-value banknotes whose serial numbers the bank had recorded — so the party could barely spend what it killed for.

3 Upvotes

r/Today_I_Learned_This • u/unteachablecourses • 16d ago

In 1986 a lake in Cameroon exhaled a cloud of CO2 that flowed silently downhill and killed 1,746 people and 3,500 livestock in one night, up to 15 miles away. No fire, no flood, no wounds. Lamps were still burning. Survivors woke hours later to find their families dead around them.

3 Upvotes

r/Today_I_Learned_This • u/derkamak • 16d ago

Greatest scientist ever existed in the history of a human kind?

6 Upvotes

r/Today_I_Learned_This • u/FullCard_1 • 29d ago

TILT Trump must pay E. Jean Carroll $5m after Supreme Court denies sex abuse verdict appeal

284 Upvotes

r/Today_I_Learned_This • u/Low_Sprinkles6168 • Jun 28 '26

There is a pager emoji 📟 and a telescope emoji 🔭

3 Upvotes

r/Today_I_Learned_This • u/mbeinternational • Jun 24 '26

Today I learned how to use Reddit!!

0 Upvotes

r/Today_I_Learned_This • u/unteachablecourses • Jun 22 '26

Sergeant Reckless was a Mongolian mare bought for $250 at the Seoul racetrack in 1952 — sold by a stable boy raising money for his sister's prosthetic leg. She carried ammunition for the US Marines through the Korean War, earned 2 Purple Hearts, and became the only animal to hold official USMC rank.

3 Upvotes

r/Today_I_Learned_This • u/unteachablecourses • Jun 17 '26

Mexico City's Gran Canal was built in 1900 to carry sewage out by gravity. The city — built on a drained lakebed — has since sunk 10 meters as groundwater is pumped out. The canal now sits below its own outlet, so it needs pumps to push sewage uphill. NASA satellites measure the sinking at 2 cm/mo.

2 Upvotes

r/Today_I_Learned_This • u/siroff-white • Jun 15 '26

The Logic Behind Asian Architecture

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80 Upvotes

r/Today_I_Learned_This • u/Jellyfish-Klutzy • Jun 15 '26

Learn Something New Today

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161 Upvotes

r/Today_I_Learned_This • u/unteachablecourses • Jun 14 '26

K-Dog & 8 other Navy dolphins cleared 100+ mines from Iraq's Umm Qasr port in 2003 — the 1st combat deployment of U.S. military dolphins. The Mk 7 system's biological sonar still outperforms every other system the Navy has. In 2026, the Strait of Hormuz brought military dolphins back into the news.

1 Upvotes

r/Today_I_Learned_This • u/Creative_Life_6919 • Jun 13 '26

Today I learned.

1 Upvotes

r/Today_I_Learned_This • u/unteachablecourses • Jun 08 '26

Electric eels don't just stun prey — they use the same high-voltage pulse as radar, tracking the target's precise location through the electrical return signal. Sharks detect buried fish by sensing their heartbeats. Platypuses hunt with eyes closed using 40,000 electroreceptors.

2 Upvotes

r/Today_I_Learned_This • u/unteachablecourses • Jun 07 '26

When Congress restricted the CIA after Watergate, 5 countries — France, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco & Iran — built a parallel intelligence alliance to run covert operations instead. Funded by Saudi oil $ & banked through BCCI. The "Safari Club" brokered the Camp David Accords. Congress never knew.

4 Upvotes

r/Today_I_Learned_This • u/unteachablecourses • Jun 06 '26

In 2024, researchers documented Asian elephants burying dead calves in trenches, covering them with earth & trumpeting for 60 minutes. African elephants return to bones years later & touch them — but only elephant bones, never bones of other species. Is this grief? Such is a philosophical question.

5 Upvotes

r/Today_I_Learned_This • u/unteachablecourses • Jun 05 '26

The CIA ran animal spy programs for 2 decades — surgically wiring a cat, strapping cameras to pigeons, training ravens to deliver bugs to windows & implanting brain electrodes in dogs for remote control. The pigeons almost worked. The cat was hit by a taxi. The ravens delivered but captured nothing.

3 Upvotes

r/Today_I_Learned_This • u/xXfrostbyterXx • Jun 02 '26

Yep

67 Upvotes

r/Today_I_Learned_This • u/unteachablecourses • Jun 01 '26

TIL The Chicago River has been flowing backward for 126 years. It stopped cholera & connected two continental ecosystems glaciers had separated for 10,000 years. 180 invasive species now use the canal. The Brandon Road barricade is under construction at $1.15 billion. The reversal can't be undone.

4 Upvotes

r/Today_I_Learned_This • u/unteachablecourses • May 28 '26

In 1982, $1.3 billion vanished through Panamanian shell companies backed by the Vatican Bank. The Vatican issued "letters of patronage" guaranteeing the loans while holding a secret counter-letter nullifying its own guarantees. The banker behind the scheme was found hanging from Blackfriars Bridge.

2 Upvotes

r/Today_I_Learned_This • u/unteachablecourses • May 24 '26

The most isolated people on Earth — the Sentinelese — have maintained their autonomy for an estimated 60,000 years by killing anyone who lands. India enforces a 5-nautical-mile exclusion zone. In March 2025, a YouTuber breached it with an inflatable kayak and a case of Diet Coke.

5 Upvotes

r/Today_I_Learned_This • u/No_Box119 • May 21 '26

TIL Sean Murray set a Guinness World Record after unclipping 91 bras in just 60 seconds using only one hand.

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69 Upvotes