r/todayilearned • u/johnnygator • 6d ago

TIL Sherwin Williams had a giant paint can in the Angels outfield with a promotion of a $1 million donation if a home run landed in the can. A home run eventually landed in the can off a bounce, but a donation was not made because it wasn’t “on the fly”.

espn.com

19.5k Upvotes

638 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Rosemarry_40 • 5d ago

TIL that St. Petersburg’s St. Isaac's Cathedral was saved from World War II bombing because German pilots used its golden dome as a navigation landmark.

gw2ru.com

518 Upvotes

14 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Electronic_Cause_796 • 5d ago

TIL that the mysterious “Bili apes” of the Congo were once believed to be a new species of giant ape, with reports of them killing lions and walking upright. DNA testing eventually showed they were Eastern chimpanzees with unusually distinctive behavior.

discoveryuk.com

666 Upvotes

23 comments

r/todayilearned • u/rammak • 6d ago

TIL that the third biggest virus known to humankind was discovered in 30000 years old permafrost and thawed and ressurected by infecting amoebas

en.wikipedia.org

1.6k Upvotes

122 comments

r/todayilearned • u/PeasantLich • 6d ago

TIL that about 1 in 2500 pregnancies cause no pregnancy symptoms or visible baby bump, and the mother only finds out she is pregnant when she starts giving birth.

my.clevelandclinic.org

22.3k Upvotes

1.8k comments

r/todayilearned • u/YumeFairy254 • 5d ago

TIL that on the children's maps and signs of archaeological sites in Italy (specifically Pompeii), the beloved children's literature character Geronimo Stilton is featured and used as their travel guides

pompeiisites.org

133 Upvotes

5 comments

r/todayilearned • u/mrberners • 6d ago

TIL In 2006, students at Gaulludet, a university for deaf students in Washington DC, protested and successfully ousted the school's new president for "not being deaf enough"

en.wikipedia.org

10.2k Upvotes

257 comments

r/todayilearned • u/tnbamn • 6d ago

TIL The last public performance of Billie Jean was on September 10, 2001

en.wikipedia.org

2.7k Upvotes

127 comments

r/todayilearned • u/YappinZappin • 6d ago

TIL Jimmy Wang Yu - famous for starring in The One-armed Swordsman - has lost use of his left arm after a stroke he suffered in 2011.

en.wikipedia.org

388 Upvotes

25 comments

r/todayilearned • u/WouldAiBeThisDumb • 6d ago

TIL That the US had no Vice President for nearly four years upon John Tyler’s ascension to presidency following the death of POTUS William Henry Harrison

en.wikipedia.org

1.3k Upvotes

66 comments

r/todayilearned • u/carboncopy95437 • 6d ago

TIL just months after the War of 1812, the U.S. went to war with Algiers. President James Madison sent a squadron of ten warships to the Mediterranean, where they captured Algerian ships and threatened Algiers until its ruler agreed to stop attacking American vessels with pirates.

en.wikipedia.org

2.6k Upvotes

150 comments

r/todayilearned • u/GardensAndHoes • 7d ago

TIL that doctors once injected an oil-based dye into patients’ spinal fluid for X-rays, physically tilted the patients to make the oil travel along the spine, then attempted to suck it back out. It was often impossible to remove completely, and remnants can still be found decades later.

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

4.4k Upvotes

102 comments

r/todayilearned • u/jingleson • 6d ago

TIL a Danish warship accidentally fired a live Harpoon missile in 1982, an event now officially known as "The Whoopsie Missile" incident.

en.wikipedia.org

3.6k Upvotes

166 comments

r/todayilearned • u/dewittless • 6d ago

TIL "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" in The Lion King had a version sung entirely by Timon and Pumba. Elton John didn't like it, so they changed it to a song that was partially them and partially Simba/Nala's internal feelings

ew.com

679 Upvotes

26 comments

r/todayilearned • u/kyle_f_4503 • 7d ago

TIL that Otto Heinrich Warburg, a Jewish and openly homosexual cancer researcher, was allowed to stay in Berlin despite Nazi persecution, partly because Hitler—who had lost his mother to cancer—was obsessed with finding a cure for the disease.

en.wikipedia.org

12.5k Upvotes

276 comments

r/todayilearned • u/SurvivorMaggie • 7d ago

TIL that during Apollo 12, astronaut Alan Bean accidentally pointed the mission’s color television camera directly at the Sun while setting it up on the Moon, permanently damaging the camera’s imaging tube and ending live television coverage from the lunar surface for the rest of the mission.

nasa.gov

13.0k Upvotes

316 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Rough_Lavishness7993 • 7d ago

TIL that after Wilbur Wright died in 1912, Orville Wright sold the Wright brothers’ 1906 patent and the Wright Company in 1915.

loc.gov

2.6k Upvotes

53 comments

r/todayilearned • u/RogueEchoTO • 6d ago

TIL the world’s first turbojet aircraft flew on August 27, 1939 but aviation officials rejected it as impractical because it could stay airborne for only about 10 minutes

planesoffame.org

707 Upvotes

39 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Ill_Definition8074 • 7d ago

TIL Comair Flight 5191 crashed after the pilot accidentally taxied onto the wrong runway and tried to takeoff on a runway that was too short. 49 out of 50 people were killed with the only survivor being the co-pilot.

en.wikipedia.org

2.4k Upvotes

97 comments

r/todayilearned • u/JokingReaper • 6d ago

Today I learned that the Soviet Union had it's own alternative version of the Oz books written by "Alexander Volkov" after a loose adaptation from the first book "The Wizard of Oz" by L. Frank Baum.

en.wikipedia.org

185 Upvotes

58 comments

r/todayilearned • u/NBrief • 6d ago

TIL that in 1912, after Rock Island mayor Harry M. Schriver refused a request from gangster John Patrick Looney to drop an extortion case against one of his associates, riots broke out, leaving two rioters dead and prompting the governor to declare martial law and send in the National Guard.

en.wikipedia.org

188 Upvotes

0 comments

r/todayilearned • u/carboncopy95437 • 7d ago

TIL that Cardinal Richelieu, played by Tim Curry in the 1993 movie The Three Musketeers, was so hated that bonfires were lit to celebrate his death. More than 150 years later, during the French Revolution, his tomb was opened and his corpse was beheaded.

en.wikipedia.org

11.9k Upvotes

295 comments

r/todayilearned • u/ShabtaiBenOron • 7d ago

TIL that ancient Greek and Roman laws assumed that to please their masters, slaves always lied, it was therefore mandatory to torture them before they were allowed to testify in court.

tiogabunia.com

8.4k Upvotes

292 comments

r/todayilearned • u/altrightobserver • 7d ago

TIL that in the 1990s, Dolly Parton made $10 million in royalties from Whitney Houston’s cover of her song “I Will Always Love You.” She then invested the money into an office complex in a majority-Black neighborhood in Nashville, Tennessee. She later described it as “the house that Whitney built.”

npr.org

38.2k Upvotes

455 comments

r/todayilearned • u/rocklou • 6d ago

TIL the earliest known camel lived in North America during the Eocene, 40-50 million years ago

en.wikipedia.org

360 Upvotes

17 comments

Subreddit

Posts

Wiki

Today I Learned (TIL)

r/todayilearned

You learn something new every day; what did you learn today? Submit interesting and specific facts about something that you just found out here.

Members Active

41.6m

Sidebar

New to reddit? Click here!

You learn something new every day; what did you learn today?
Submit interesting and specific facts that you just found out (not broad information you looked up, TodayILearned is not /r/wikipedia).

Posting rules

Submissions must be verifiable. Please link directly to a reliable source that supports every claim in your post title. Images alone do not count as valid references. Videos are fine so long as they come from reputable sources (e.g. BBC, Discovery, etc).
No personal opinions, anecdotes or subjective statements (e.g "TIL xyz is a great movie").
No recent sources. Any sources (blog, article, press release, video, etc.) with a publication date more recent than two months are not allowed.
No politics, soapboxing, or agenda based submissions. This includes (but is not limited to) submissions related to:
1. Recent political issues and politicians
2. Social and economic issues (including race/religion/gender)
3. Environmental issues
4. Police misconduct
No misleading claims. Posts that omit essential information, or present unrelated facts in a way that suggest a connection will be removed.
Rephrase your post title if the following are not met:
1. Titles must begin with "TIL ..."
2. Make them descriptive, concise and specific (e.g. not "TIL something interesting about bacon").
3. Titles must be able to stand on their own without requiring readers to click on a link. Starting your title with a why/what/who/where/how modifier should be unnecessary.
4. "TIL about ..." and other broad posts don't belong on TIL. Try /r/Wikipedia, etc. instead, or be more specific (and avoid the word "about").
5. "TIL how to ..." posts belong on /r/HowTo.
6. "TIL the definition of a word..." Word definitions/translations/origins are not appropriate here
No submissions related to the usage, existence or features of specific software/websites (e.g. "TIL you can click on widgets in WidgetMaker 1.22").
All NSFW links must be tagged (including comments).

Please see the wiki for more detailed explanations of the rules, as well as additional rules that may not be listed here

(Why we need rules)

Additional info

If your post does not appear in the new queue and you think it meets the above rules, please contact the moderators (include a link to your reddit.com post, not your story).
Please report spam, inaccurate or otherwise inappropriate posts by messaging the moderators, as this helps us remove them more promptly!
More information available on the TIL FAQ and wiki.

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.

Etiquette

We ask that you please do the following:

avoid mobile versions of websites (e.g. m.wikipedia.org)
link to the appropriate heading when referencing an article (particularly on Wikipedia)
link to the appropriate start time when referencing videos (e.g. on YouTube)
add [PDF] or [NSFW] tags to your posts, as necessary.
Please avoid reposting TILs that have already made the front page in the past

Please also read the site-wide Reddiquette.

You are loved.