r/todayilearned 4h ago

TIL that Sigmund Freud in 1935, the founder of psychoanalysis, refused to "treat" homosexuality, stating that it could not be classified as an illness

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18.6k Upvotes

r/todayilearned 7h ago

TIL about an obscure Egyptian god named Medjed. The only god depicted as forward facing and having 2 eyes. He also bizarrely gained popularity on the Japanese internet shortly after his discovery.

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5.8k Upvotes

r/todayilearned 11h ago

TIL hippos have a reflex mechanism that allows them to pop up, take a breath, and go back down without waking up so they can sleep underwater.

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nathab.com
5.2k Upvotes

r/todayilearned 11h ago

TIL Whale falls are a major source of nutrients for the ocean's bathyal or abyssal zones. The remains of an estimated 690,000 whales are being broken down on the ocean floor, with the bodies being picked clean, the skeletons dissolved, and ultimately a reef formed.

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2.5k Upvotes

r/todayilearned 10h ago

TIL of Caratacus who held off the Romans for ten years, using hit and run tactics. Finally he was betrayed and taken prisoner by the Romans, but gave such an eloquent speech, that Emperor Claudius set him free.

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1.7k Upvotes

r/todayilearned 4h ago

TIL that tipping and bribery are related, and countries with higher rates of tipping behavior also tended to have higher rates of corruption

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hbswk.hbs.edu
483 Upvotes

r/todayilearned 20h ago

Today I learned that genuine wasabi is rare and likely not even served in most high-end sushi restaurants. Apparently the real deal is difficult to grow as it’s quite picky and takes approx. three years to mature.

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mashed.com
5.6k Upvotes

r/todayilearned 1d ago All-Seeing Upvote

TIL that Hawaii was a sovereign self-governing kingdom all the way up until 1893, totally unassociated with the U.S., until a coup d'état that year by 13 businessmen and 162 U.S. troops, with the openly stated goal of annexing the islands. (They succeeded.)

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nvlchawaii.org
21.8k Upvotes

r/todayilearned 1d ago Wearing is Caring Burning Cash Gold

TIL Elvis Presley craved the Fool's Gold Loaf, which consists of a hollowed-out loaf of French bread filled with one 1-lb. jar each of creamy peanut and grape jelly and a pound of fried bacon. It packs ~8,000 calories. He and friends once flew from Memphis to Denver to eat 30 of them.

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en.wikipedia.org
42.4k Upvotes

r/todayilearned 4h ago

TIL Sharks first appeared around 420 million years ago, which means they were around before the dinosaurs

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shark-islands.com
240 Upvotes

r/todayilearned 2h ago

TIL That the saying "cried all the way to the bank" is popularly attributed to Liberace, who famously wrote the phrase in a telegram after winning a libel suit against a reporter who had insinuated that Liberace was homosexual.

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en.wikipedia.org
146 Upvotes

r/todayilearned 9h ago

TIL, that because Mars father is Jupiter and Jupiters father is Saturn, Johann Bode proposed that the 7th planet should be named after Jupiters father. Bode was unaware of the fact that Uranus was the greek and not roman god. There are now 6 planets named after roman gods and 1 named after a greek.

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en.wikipedia.org
271 Upvotes

r/todayilearned 15h ago

TIL Some of the reasons people drive aggressively include a sense of anonymity while driving, feeling more empowered driving than in the rest of their lives, and a feeling that other drivers have previously driven aggressively around them.

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660 Upvotes

r/todayilearned 13h ago

TIL that Stephen III of Moldavia handed the Ottoman Empire one of its greatest losses in 1475, despite being heavily outnumbered. After the battle, Stephen fasted for forty days and banned people from praising him for his success, saying that it belonged to God alone.

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en.wikipedia.org
442 Upvotes

r/todayilearned 11h ago

TIL Copyleft is a thing - It's the legal name for a license allowing free use and modification of work. And yes, it has a symbol that is a rotated copyright mark.

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en.wikipedia.org
341 Upvotes

r/todayilearned 3h ago

TIL it's illegal to sell whisky in Scotland that is less than 40% alcohol by volume (abv)

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scotch-whisky.org.uk
64 Upvotes

r/todayilearned 1d ago

TIL the longest recorded sniper kill was in June 2017, by an unnamed Canadian sniper with a 3,540 m (3,871 yd) shot in the Iraqi Civil War, surpassing a 2009 record by over 1,000 m (1,100 yd).

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en.wikipedia.org
5.8k Upvotes

r/todayilearned 4h ago

TIL If you heat the diamond in the open air, it will begin to melt and burn at around 700 degrees Celsius (1,292 degrees Fahrenheit). Burning a diamond without oxygen, however, will make it change into graphite (a crystalline form of carbon) before transforming into a fluid.

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bixlers.com
80 Upvotes

r/todayilearned 23h ago

TIL Disney World had its own airport that had a runway that featured a set of grooves, like rumble strips on the side of a highway, that played “When You Wish Upon a Star” when driven over at roughly 45 miles per hour to surprise the airplane passengers.

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2.1k Upvotes

r/todayilearned 8h ago

TIL that limelight is a type of lighting once used for stages. Intense illumination is created when a flame fed by oxygen and hydrogen is directed at a cylinder of quicklime. Long since replaced by electric lighting, the term has survived; someone in the public eye is said to be "in the limelight."

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en.wikipedia.org
136 Upvotes

r/todayilearned 1h ago

TIL: By some estimates, Al Capone had been directly or indirectly responsible for over 200 murders, the most notorious of which was the St. Valentine's Day Massacre in February 1929. But ultimately, law enforcement charged him with 22 counts of tax evasion, and convicted him on 5 counts.

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Upvotes

r/todayilearned 1d ago

TIL A casino can just kick you out if you win to much even if you are not cheating or doing anything wrong.

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42.8k Upvotes

r/todayilearned 1h ago

TIL that the cavatappi pasta shape was created by accident when a set of pasta dies at a Barilla factory had been mistakenly made with a spiral (instead of straight) set of lines. These produced pasta in a spiral or spring shape.

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en.wikipedia.org
Upvotes

r/todayilearned 8h ago

TIL The Loch Ness Monster has a scientific name, Nessiteras rhombopteryx. Proposed by Sir Peter Scott, it's Greek for "the Ness monster with diamond fin" but also an anagram of "monster hoax by Sir Peter S"

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daily.jstor.org
114 Upvotes

r/todayilearned 1h ago

TIL: Ginggaew Lorsoungnern is a Thai woman who survived her first execution in 1979 because she had situs inversus, a condition where all of the body’s organs are reversed.

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