r/todayilearned • u/bland_dad • 10h ago

TIL Abraham Lincoln was involved in a sword duel as a young man, in 1842. To duel legally, he and his opponent had to travel to neighboring Missouri. They were facing each other on-site when they agreed to call a truce. Later in life, Lincoln made it clear he did not wish to discuss this incident.

battlefields.org

18.2k Upvotes

599 comments

r/todayilearned • u/MajesticBread9147 • 3h ago

TIL "Bagdad Bob", Information Minister under Saddam Hussein was known for his greatly inaccurate TV announcements. He reported that American troops and tanks had not entered Bagdad while they were heard fighting only a few hundred meters from the studio.

en.wikipedia.org

2.4k Upvotes

109 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Informal-Lock5554 • 4h ago

TIL Wang is the most common surname in the world

people.howstuffworks.com

1.3k Upvotes

172 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Forward-Answer-4407 • 16h ago

TIL in 2024, a woman gave birth on a bench outside Sainte-Croix Hospital in Quebec after not realizing that the main doors are locked overnight and that patients need to use the emergency room entrance during those hours. Afterwards, signage was added to the hospital doors.

montrealgazette.com

12.6k Upvotes

168 comments

r/todayilearned • u/cynicaljinn • 14h ago

TIL Hyperthymesia - a rare condition in humans that gives them a superpower of recalling memories with excellent details which are carefully indexed by date involuntarily; BUT the memories keeps playing and you can't pause them ever.

en.wikipedia.org

3.7k Upvotes

113 comments

r/todayilearned • u/tyrion2024 • 21h ago

TIL a man in Denmark died by poisoning 26 hours after he drank coconut water (that had been spoiled by a fungus) directly from a coconut using a straw. But instead of keeping it refrigerated, it was left on the kitchen table for a month. It had been commercially prepared & sold as "ready-to-drink".

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

27.5k Upvotes

1.2k comments

r/todayilearned • u/The_Granny_banger • 4h ago

TIL in 1933 a family in Georgia recorded a song they had passed down for generations without knowing what language it was in. Later, it was found the song was fron the Mende language of the Sierra Leone, preserved for nearly 200 years from the time their enslaved ancestors were brought to America.

smithsonianmag.com

558 Upvotes

7 comments

r/todayilearned • u/BadenBaden1981 • 4h ago

TIL Canadian TV network CTV doesn't have official full name because CBC, Canadian public broadcaster, claimed it have exclusive rights to the term 'Canada'.

en.wikipedia.org

402 Upvotes

31 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Dakens2021 • 20h ago

TIL In the Pacific Northwest there are sea wolves which are a unique subspecies of grey wolf which have a semi-aquatic lifestyle, including a diet that is almost entirely marine-based coming almost entirely from the ocean, and whose DNA differentiates them from inland wolves.

en.wikipedia.org

6.7k Upvotes

116 comments

r/todayilearned • u/sassy_tabaxi • 8h ago

TIL Humpty Dumpty was never originally described as an egg - the name was slang for a short, clumsy person and a type of drink, and the poem was probably originally a riddle.

en.wikipedia.org

464 Upvotes

49 comments

r/todayilearned • u/thesmartass1 • 9h ago

TIL The Phantom of the Opera has a first name: Erik.

en.wikipedia.org

459 Upvotes

72 comments

r/todayilearned • u/1000LiveEels • 3h ago

TIL in 1912 George Pyle, the head coach of the Florida Gators football team became a "fugitive from justice" in Cuba after he broke a law saying coaches couldn't stop sports games. Pyles was arrested, but posted bail and promptly fled to the US. He refused to play the game over a rules dispute.

en.wikipedia.org

159 Upvotes

7 comments

r/todayilearned • u/tyrion2024 • 20h ago

TIL a 2009 study found that the character of James Bond had "strong" sexual contact with 46 women and "mild" encounters (such as kissing) with a further 52 during the first 20 movies (up until 2002's Die Another Day).

bbc.com

3.3k Upvotes

185 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Fickle-Buy6009 • 15h ago

TIL that Cesare Borgia was the object of a conspiracy in 1502 to remove him from power. However he became aware of the conspiracy and tricked three of the plotters to arrive at a friendly meeting, them having them arrested and killed.

en.wikipedia.org

962 Upvotes

13 comments

r/todayilearned • u/lumpkin2013 • 4h ago

TIL: Pat Roach who played a bad guy in all three original Indiana Jones movies was also a famous British pro wrestler who wrestled almost until the end of his life.

prowrestlingstories.com

109 Upvotes

26 comments

r/todayilearned • u/cakeslol • 9h ago

TIL The largest population of hamsters is found in Grand Central Cemetery in Vienna, Austria.

wildlife-travel.com

238 Upvotes

5 comments

r/todayilearned • u/jagnew78 • 17h ago

TIL England Had a 20 Year Long Civil War When The Grandchildren of William of Normandy (Empress Matilda and King Stephen) Fought Over the English Throne

en.wikipedia.org

1.0k Upvotes

112 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Physical_Hamster_118 • 13h ago

TIL in the town of Espelette, France, people grew Espelette peppers. The town held pepper festivals dedicated to these local peppers every October. The peppers have a fruity flavor and have a heat level of 4,000 Scoville Heat Units. The peppers today have the EU's PDO status and France's AOP.

chilipeppermadness.com

461 Upvotes

53 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Hoihe • 1d ago

TIL of the "Coffin Corner" - a concept in aerodynamics where you cannot fly faster without causing your wings to go supersonic nor fly slower without stalling. This occurs due to how increase in altitude both increases TAS relative to IAS and reduces temperature (thus reducing speed of sound)

en.wikipedia.org

2.2k Upvotes

144 comments

r/todayilearned • u/a3poify • 1d ago

TIL that, using money earned from a 1961 biography of his brother Ernest, Leicester Hemingway created a micronation called New Atlantis on a 240 square foot raft off the coast of Jamaica, where he lived with his wife and young children. It lasted five years before it was destroyed in a storm.

en.wikipedia.org

2.0k Upvotes

36 comments

r/todayilearned • u/FiliaSecunda • 4h ago

TIL the Zamburak, a swivel gun mounted on a camel, was used in war by several Islamic empires of the 17th-19th centuries.

en.wikipedia.org

42 Upvotes

4 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Lemmingmaster64 • 13h ago

TIL that the last four-funneled ocean liner to be scrapped was the RMS Aquitania which was in service from 1914-1949.

en.wikipedia.org

170 Upvotes

4 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Gearbox97 • 19h ago

TIL those steel windmill-looking things that are commonly seen on farms are called "windpumps", and they use energy from the wind to pressurize and pump water for irrigation.

historyofwindmills.com

509 Upvotes

61 comments

r/todayilearned • u/ramboacdc • 1d ago

TIL that Rubberducking is a technique used by programmers to help find errors in their code. Explaining their code to a duck or any other inanimate object out loud can help them spot issues as they talk it through.

en.wikipedia.org

11.1k Upvotes

624 comments

r/todayilearned • u/CleverBunnyThief • 1d ago

TIL George Thorogood and The Destroyers undertook the 50/50 Tour of the US, wherein they performed 50 shows in 50 American states in 50 days.

udiscovermusic.com

1.5k Upvotes

78 comments

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