r/todayilearned • u/DueNeedleworker5036 • 5h ago

TIL that the Civilizations games (and others) include creator Sid Meier's name in the title because Robin Williams joked that it would help sell more copies of 1987's Sid Meier's Pirates.

en.wikipedia.org

• Upvotes

447 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Depressed_Cat_00 • 11h ago

TIL during a 1929 race to build New York’s tallest skyscraper, the Chrysler Building secretly assembled a 27-ton, 185-foot steel spire inside the unfinished tower, then hoisted it into place in under two hours — raising the building to 1,046 feet and suddenly beating its rival, the Manhattan Company

skyscraper.org

• Upvotes

206 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Sebastianlim • 9h ago

TIL that Achilles was not invulnerable during the Iliad, as he is described being wounded by another soldier. The River Styx story isn't mentioned until the 1st century AD, where it was mentioned in the unfinished epic poem the Achilleid.

en.wikipedia.org

• Upvotes

267 comments

r/todayilearned • u/smrad8 • 3h ago

TIL the television series Better Call Saul was nominated for 30 Primetime Emmy Awards and won zero.

en.wikipedia.org

• Upvotes

148 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Willing-Student-5604 • 7h ago

TIL that Bette Nesmith Graham invented correction fluid in her kitchen using tempera paint and a blender, built a successful company selling it to typists, and was eventually fired from her job after accidentally using her own company's name on her employer's letterhead.

en.wikipedia.org

• Upvotes

91 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Majorpain2006 • 15h ago

TIL Nathan Fielder went to Point Grey Secondary School in Vancouver, the same school as Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. They were all part of the school's comedy improv group. Their high school improv team won their provincial championship but lost in the national championship.

looper.com

• Upvotes

583 comments

r/todayilearned • u/SuperCalibur • 6h ago

TIL There is a 23 mile bridge in Louisiana built in the 50s called the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway

en.wikipedia.org

• Upvotes

160 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Recent_Flounder6011 • 3h ago

TIL that Costa Rica abolished its armed forces in 1949 due to the civil war there in 1948 and to prevent another military coup. It's even part of the country's constitution.

en.wikipedia.org

• Upvotes

30 comments

r/todayilearned • u/fan_tas_tic • 21h ago

TIL that Japan's first astronaut, Toyohiro Akiyama, hated his time in space because he suffered from severe space sickness and chain-smoked four packs a day on Earth. His fellow cosmonauts later reported, in regards to his nausea, that they "hadn't ever seen a man vomit that much."

en.wikipedia.org

• Upvotes

775 comments

r/todayilearned • u/MajesticBread9147 • 19h ago

TIL Voltaire wrote a sci-fi novella where a giant alien from a planet orbiting Sirius befriends a giant alien from Saturn after being banished from his home planet. They visit Earth and assume it's lifeless, only to be shocked to discover a 'microscopic' whale.

en.wikipedia.org

• Upvotes

144 comments

r/todayilearned • u/gobogorilla • 1h ago

TIL the highest ticket gross for ANY movie is not Avatar or some superhero - it's Gone With The Wind with an inflation-adjusted total gross of $3.44 billion.

guinnessworldrecords.com

• Upvotes

78 comments

r/todayilearned • u/carboncopy95437 • 10h ago

TIL that Thailand is home to the Kitti’s hog-nosed bat, commonly called the bumblebee bat. Weighing only about 2 grams and measuring roughly 1.2 inches long, it is considered the smallest bat species in the world and one of the smallest mammals.

en.wikipedia.org

• Upvotes

11 comments

r/todayilearned • u/GentPc • 14h ago

TIL about the Filthy 13. The Demolition Section of the Regimental Headquarters of the 506th PIR 101st Airborne. Shaving their heads into Mohawks and wearing Native American war paint before jumping into Normandy they were the real life inspiration for 'The Dirty Dozen'.

armyupress.army.mil

• Upvotes

62 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Alberto9Herrera • 4h ago

TIL Disney’s 2015 TV series “Pickle and Peanut” has a sizable following in Japan with merchandise even releasing exclusively in the country

en.wikipedia.org

• Upvotes

13 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Inside_Blacksmith480 • 39m ago

TIL about Wang Mang (45BC - 23 AD), Usurper to Han Dynasty in China, had an obsession of renaming geographic regions. His empire collapsed by nation-wide rebellion.

en.wikipedia.org

• Upvotes

18 comments

r/todayilearned • u/ubcstaffer123 • 1d ago

TIL The lottery winner of the Taylor Swift Eras VIP tickets concert in Vancouver was a music fan who donated four seats in his VIP suite to the Make-A-Wish-Foundation. He bought a scratch and win ticket on a whim and won tickets

nsnews.com

• Upvotes

62 comments

r/todayilearned • u/A-CommonMan • 20h ago

TIL that in 1878, a 96-pound machinist flew a hand-cranked hydrogen airship, then repaired its propeller with a pocketknife while dangling 3,000 feet in the air.

smithsonianmag.com

• Upvotes

35 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Aleksandr_Ulyev • 28m ago

TIL about Genesis P-Orridge, a British industrial music artist, who put lot of efforts into breaking all kinds of norms. In 1993 he and his girlfriend spent $200 000 to alternate their bodies to resemble one another, while adopting the third gender and combining their names into one Breyer P-Orridge

en.wikipedia.org

• Upvotes

10 comments

r/todayilearned • u/txs2300 • 1d ago

TIL that Kuwait’s unofficial stock market grew so large it trailed only the US and Japan — and when it crashed in 1982, nearly every bank in the country became insolvent, plunging Kuwait into recession.

en.wikipedia.org

• Upvotes

78 comments

r/todayilearned • u/WestTransportation12 • 1d ago

TIL French impostor Frédéric Bourdin convinced a Texas family he was their missing 13 year old son. Bourdin bleached his hair, got a matching tattoo and concocted a story he was human trafficked. Despite having different eye color, a French accent and being 23. He was sentenced to 6 years in prison.

yahoo.com

• Upvotes

182 comments

r/todayilearned • u/BonesMcFly • 1d ago

TIL that lead found in ancient Roman shipwrecks is used in highly sensitive equipment due to its low radiation levels.

en.wikipedia.org

• Upvotes

107 comments

r/todayilearned • u/impulse07 • 1d ago

TIL real Somali pirate from Captain Phillips is sentenced to 33 years in US prison

bbc.com

• Upvotes

461 comments

r/todayilearned • u/jacknunn • 1d ago

TIL that 39 days before D-Day, a top-secret full-scale rehearsal for the Utah Beach landings was conducted in England called Exercise Tiger. It was attacked by German E-boats, killing 749 American servicemen—more than were killed during the Utah Beach landings on D-Day

en.wikipedia.org

• Upvotes

66 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Sebastianlim • 1d ago

TIL that in Spider-Man: The Animated Series, Spider-Man was not allowed to punch anyone. Producer John Semper Jr. claimed that it was his idea, as he didn't want to teach children to "solve problems through simple violence", and belived that Spider-Man should use more tactical methods.

en.wikipedia.org

• Upvotes

456 comments

r/todayilearned • u/CooperHChurch427 • 1d ago

TIL in 2013 a Columbian man with HIV was admitted to the hospital with an aggressive malignant cancer that was not human and from a small tape worm. He died 72 hours later.

smithsonianmag.com

• Upvotes

285 comments

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Frequent TILs Repost List

As of May 2026

This list was compiled from /r/todayilearned community suggestions by its members. If your TIL is found on this list, it will be removed. The titles have been abridged for the sake of brevity, however the context remains the same. This list is subject to change. The purpose is to keep content fresh on /r/todayilearned as requested by its members. If you are interested in reading about the TILs on this list use the search box feature and enter the keywords to pull up past TILs.

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