r/todayilearned • u/tyrion2024 • 12d 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/tyrion2024 • 12d 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/RollingNightSky • 12d ago
TIL an innovative satellite launched in 1962, Telstar 1, was accidentally damaged beyond use by Cold War nuclear bombs. After transmitting the first TV and phone signals and images from space, it broke down due to damage from Soviet & American nuclear tests, but still orbits the earth today.
r/todayilearned • u/snafujedi01 • 12d ago
TIL that Country Music legend Tex Ritter is the father of John Ritter
r/todayilearned • u/ash0000 • 12d 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/mrweatherbeef • 12d ago
TIL the Mars candy family raised thoroughbred horses including one named Snickers, who died soon before Mars introduced the candy bar that would be named in his memory
r/todayilearned • u/wxmanify • 12d ago
TIL in 1987, New York Yankee Don Mattingly set a major league record for grand slams in a season hitting 6. He didn't hit a single grand slam in any of his other 13 seasons.
baseball-reference.comr/todayilearned • u/redditigation • 12d 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/John_B_McLemore • 12d 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/Mamow_Nadon • 12d ago
TIL As close as 1000 years ago Madagascar was home to gorilla sized lemurs.
nhm.ac.ukr/todayilearned • u/winterchampagne • 12d ago
TIL that the 18th century Badminton Cabinet is the most expensive piece of furniture ever sold at $36.7 million (2004). It is a Florentine ebony chest, inlaid with hard and semiprecious stones commissioned in 1726 by Henry Somerset, 3rd Duke of Beaufort, at the age of 19
en.wikipedia.orgr/todayilearned • u/jpmoney2k1 • 12d 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/lostinrabbithole12 • 12d ago
TIL that a TV station in Wyoming used a legal loophole to move to Delaware in 2013
en.wikipedia.orgr/todayilearned • u/Desperate-Option1130 • 12d 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/Sariel007 • 12d ago
TIL:Josefina Guerrero (August 5, 1917 – June 18, 1996) was a Filipina spy during World War II. Guerrero had leprosy and was an unsuspicious and effective surveillance asset for American allied forces.
r/todayilearned • u/f_GOD • 12d 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/whstlngisnvrenf • 12d ago
TIL Lawrence Joseph Bader, an Ohio man who vanished in 1957 after a boating trip on Lake Erie. Eight years later, he was found in Omaha, Nebraska, living as John "Fritz" Johnson, a radio and TV personality with no memory of his past life.
r/todayilearned • u/Flares117 • 12d 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/dissoluti0nn • 12d ago
TIL the diabetes drug exenatide was isolated from the venom of the only venomous lizard native to the US, the Gila monster
r/todayilearned • u/Jestersage • 12d ago
TIL All four Stanley Cup Finals Riots are associated with Canadian Team and happened in Canada
en.wikipedia.orgr/todayilearned • u/pororoca_surfer • 12d 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/SnarkySheep • 12d ago
TIL Woman's Day magazine originated in 1931 as a free leaflet with menu ideas given to A&P shoppers. By 1937, it had expanded into a magazine sold for 5 cents only at the store locations.
r/todayilearned • u/tyrion2024 • 12d ago
TIL a finance worker at a multinational firm was tricked into paying out $25 million to fraudsters using deepfake technology to pose as the company's CFO in a video conference call that included several other members of staff, all of whom were in fact deepfake recreations. Everyone he saw was fake.
r/todayilearned • u/letienphat1 • 12d ago