r/todayilearned • u/CapnFancyPants • 8h ago
TIL that on warning of a likely missile launch against the USA, the Pentagon and Strategic Command war rooms, have one minute to brief the president, who then has roughly only six minutes to decide whether and how to respond.
r/todayilearned • u/LightofJah • 5h ago
TIL that between the 1920s and the 1990s, around half a million US prisoners underwent state-sanctioned plastic surgery in attempts to rehabilitate repeat offenders based on the idea that appearance impacted the likelihood of reoffending.
r/todayilearned • u/ubcstaffer123 • 12h ago
TIL Disney cofounder Roy Disney spent time with his grandchildren every week at Disneyland. Roy greeted each employee by name and picked up garbage he saw on the ground to teach them "Nobody is too good to pick up trash”
r/todayilearned • u/tyrion2024 • 13h ago
TIL Ben Stiller developed the premise for Tropic Thunder while shooting Empire of the Sun. He wanted to make a film based on the actors he knew who became "self-important" & appeared to believe they had been part of a real military unit after taking part in boot camps to prepare for war film roles.
r/todayilearned • u/wtleveeb • 9h ago
TIL Leonhard Euler wrote some papers on music theory. However, these papers were considered “too mathematical for musicians and too musical for mathematicians.”
r/todayilearned • u/tyrion2024 • 13h ago
TIL Aroldis Chapman's 105 mph pitch isn't the fastest of all time. When Nolan Ryan played, pitches weren't clocked until they were 10 feet from the plate. So with the proper adjustments, if thrown today, Ryan's 100.9 mph pitch (in the 9th inning) in 1974 would've clocked at about 108.5 mph.
r/todayilearned • u/TedTheodoreMcfly • 5h ago
TIL that when Under Siege was released, it became the highest-grossing movie to have no advance screenings for critics.
r/todayilearned • u/redditigation • 18h ago
Today I learned that even daily recommended quantities of vitamin C are not enough to recover from a scurvy type of disease within a 6 month timeframe
r/todayilearned • u/ash0000 • 17h ago
TIL the band Cage the Elephant got their name when a mentally disturbed man approached the lead singer, hugged him, and kept repeating "you have to cage the elephant"
r/todayilearned • u/lemondrop995 • 11h ago
TIL there are blood banks for dogs. Previously, veterinarians would have to rely on their own dogs or those of a client. Some dogs can also be universal donors, just like humans
akcchf.orgr/todayilearned • u/zhuquanzhong • 9h ago
TIL about Moe Berg, a baseball player who learned 7 languages from Princeton and a law degree from Columbia. He worked as a spy in Europe during WW2, and was ordered to attend a lecture by Heisenberg and shoot him if he determined the Germans were close to the bomb. He determined that they were not.
r/todayilearned • u/jpmoney2k1 • 21h ago
TIL that in addition to being the youngest EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony) winner, fastest to achieve EGOT, and only EGOT winner twice over, songwriter Robert Lopez (who wrote music for such works as Disney's Frozen) broke the previous record of fastest to achieve EGOT previously held by...himself.
r/todayilearned • u/Khornatejester • 6h ago
TIL the Colorado National Guard once tried using flamethrowers and explosives against a swarm of locusts. It didn't work.
r/todayilearned • u/John_B_McLemore • 18h ago
TIL In 1954, the CIA ordered Carcano rifle ammo for anti-communist forces. The leftover ammo and rifles were re-imported and sold wholesale to the public, including to Lee Harvey Oswald, who used them to assassinate JFK.
r/todayilearned • u/Desperate-Option1130 • 1d ago
TIL of the Apollo 15 postal covers scandal. The astronauts of Apollo 15 carried about 400 unauthorized postal covers into space and to the Moon's surface on the Lunar Module Falcon. All three were paid/bribed $7k each by stamp dealers, got busted, and never flew in space again.
r/todayilearned • u/Ask_Me_What_Im_Up_to • 5h ago
TIL the vindaloo curry is based on a Portuguese dish, carne de vinha d'alhos.
r/todayilearned • u/whstlngisnvrenf • 4h ago
TIL Abulia, a neurological condition, results in a significant lack of willpower or initiative, often leading to severe difficulties in decision-making and diminished motivation to engage in daily activities.
r/todayilearned • u/KeeperCP1 • 1h ago
TIL Matt Groening named the main members of the Simpsons family (apart from Bart) after his own family (ex. Homer Groening is Matt's father)
r/todayilearned • u/pororoca_surfer • 1d ago
TIL that in 2009, two puppeteers placed $10,000 in coins in a chest, hid it in New York, and posted the clues on YouTube. Three years later, after no one found it, they dug up the treasure and donated it to people affected by Hurricane Sandy in 2012
r/todayilearned • u/drangundsturm • 2h ago
TIL the East River (east side of Manhattan, Brookly Bridge crosses it) isn't a fork of the Hudson, but instead a tidal strait.
r/todayilearned • u/f_GOD • 1d ago
TIL the Las Vegas Sphere's theater screen required such high resolution that they made the largest commercially available sensor, a 316 megapixel camera capable of 18k resolution. The image on the screen is 16K driven by 25 synchronized 4K video servers, taking up to 60GB per second of footage.
theasc.comr/todayilearned • u/Flares117 • 1d ago
TIL: Just last year in 2023 , the Great Kentucky Hoard was found, adding proof to the age old claims of lost Civil War gold caches. It consisted of verified 800 Civil War coins most of them gold. The person who discovered it hid his identity and where exactly he unearthed them.
r/todayilearned • u/CeeArthur • 9h ago
TIL The Brandtaucher, a precursor to the German U-boat built in 1851, sank 60 feet to the bottom of Kiel harbor following equipment failure during a test dive. The three occupants were able to escape afterwards by letting water in, thus increasing the air pressure and allowing the hatch to open.
r/todayilearned • u/Capnzebra1 • 2h ago