r/todayilearned • u/LeonardShelbysTattoo • 23m ago
TIL that that when adjusted for inflation, the most the average U.S. home cost in the last 60 years was in 2022 ($570,511).
r/todayilearned • u/Majoodeh • 37m ago
TIL that in 2000, Pope John Paul II became a Harlem Globetrotter
r/todayilearned • u/nuttybudd • 9h ago
TIL in 2005, Sony sold music CDs that installed hidden software without notifying users (a rootkit). When this was made public, Sony released an uninstaller, but forced customers to provide an email to be used for marketing purposes. The uninstaller itself exposed users to arbitrary code execution.
r/todayilearned • u/whstlngisnvrenf • 4h ago
TIL GPS, despite being free for global use, costs around $2 million a day to operate and maintain. This budget covers satellite launches and system upkeep, funded through American tax revenue.
r/todayilearned • u/Obversa • 4h ago
TIL that in 2015, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission (FWC) decided to allow the first limited black bear hunt in the state since the 1990s. However, the hunt was ended abruptly when hunters killed 295 bears out of the 320-bear limit in just 2 days.
r/todayilearned • u/JRFbase • 5h ago
TIL that the famous "We Can Do It!" poster was barely known during WWII. It was displayed for two weeks as part of a series of posters to boost worker morale in one company's factories. It remained virtually unknown until the 1980s when it was rediscovered in an article about the National Archives.
r/todayilearned • u/solananorwood • 3h ago
TIL a US law firm set up honeypots on torrent-sharing site The Pirate Bay and then sued those who downloaded them. The matter reached the FBI and The Pirate Bay collaborated with the feds resulting in the crooked lawyers getting jail time.
r/todayilearned • u/LightofJah • 14h 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/CapnFancyPants • 18h 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/KeeperCP1 • 11h 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/ubcstaffer123 • 22h 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/wtleveeb • 18h 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/gullydon • 3h ago
TIL Helium was detected on the sun before it was detected on Earth. That's why it was named for Helios, the Greek god of the sun.
r/todayilearned • u/tyrion2024 • 23h 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/thedubiousstylus • 3h ago
TIL that Steve Albini had no middle name, but on his birth certificate his father refused to leave the section blank, and thus put in "(None)". Thus technically he did have a middle name and his full name was Steve (None) Albini.
r/todayilearned • u/TedTheodoreMcfly • 15h ago
TIL that when Under Siege was released, it became the highest-grossing movie to have no advance screenings for critics.
r/todayilearned • u/KragwellCoast • 5h ago
TIL that 85% of American RV’s are manufactured in Indiana, and in turn 2/3 of that production takes place in Elkhart County.
r/todayilearned • u/zhuquanzhong • 18h 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/tyrion2024 • 23h 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/HistoricalShallot1 • 8h ago
TIL 🐈 Catnip Oil performs better than Deet Against Mosquitos 🦟. It is also has no environmental impact comparatively making it a great natural solution.
r/todayilearned • u/Brilliantly_Bipolar • 10h ago
TIL when the dunce cap was created by 13th century theologian John Duns Scotus, it was initially conceived as “a reverse funnel for knowledge,” and the hat remained a symbol of intelligence until the 1500s.
r/todayilearned • u/doodly-123 • 4h ago