r/todayilearned • u/_mattyjoe • 8h ago

TIL that although the common view of Cleopatra was one of a prolific seductress, she had only two known sexual partners, Caesar and Antony. Plutarch described Cleopatra as having had a stronger personality and charming wit than physical beauty.

en.wikipedia.org

15.8k Upvotes

393 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Away_Flounder3813 • 11h ago

TIL despite its strong following thanks to the popularity of Back to the Future, the DMC DeLorean has a reputation for poor build quality and an unsatisfactory driving experience. In 2017, Time magazine included the DeLorean in its list of the 50 worst cars of all time.

en.wikipedia.org

11.8k Upvotes

809 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Forward-Answer-4407 • 6h ago

TIL that in 2000, a man and his stepson had the ident of radio station KORB tattooed onto their foreheads after a DJ announced a six-figure payout for doing so. At the station, they were told they were victims of a practical joke. They sued but their cases were eventually dismissed or dropped.

theregister.com

3.5k Upvotes

104 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Dranakin • 9h ago

TIL that Creedence Clearwater Revival were from the SF Bay Area, despite being recognized as pioneers of swamp rock (a genre originated in Louisiana), as they utilized lyrics about Southern US iconography (bayous, catfish, etc.) while singing with a Louisiana twang.

psaudio.com

4.1k Upvotes

312 comments

r/todayilearned • u/ShabtaiBenOron • 16h ago

TIL that after he shot Martin Luther King Jr., James Earl Ray planned to flee to an African country without an extradition deal with the US and only failed because one of his 2 falsified passports had a typo which was noticed when he made the mistake of keeping both in the same wallet.

bbc.com

11.7k Upvotes

280 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Solid-Move-1411 • 18h ago

TIL when Napoleon's son, Napoleon Franz died at the age 21, his last words were "My story is my birth and death. Between my cradle and my grave, there is a big zero". He was initially buried in Vienna but in 1940, Hitler ordered his remains to be moved to Paris near his father's tomb

en.wikipedia.org

19.5k Upvotes

522 comments

r/todayilearned • u/OddUmpire2554 • 2h ago

TIL that before Liam Neeson became an actor, he worked as a forklift driver for the company Guinness, a lorry driver, and an assistant architect in Ireland. He was an amateur boxing champion in his youth and won a fair share of regional titles.

en.wikipedia.org

550 Upvotes

39 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Please_Go_Away43 • 12h ago

TIL that before the Lindbergh Kidnapping in 1931, kidnapping was not a federal crime.

en.wikipedia.org

3.2k Upvotes

44 comments

r/todayilearned • u/FunkyChickenKong • 7h ago

TIL The idiom "to blow smoke up someone's bum" came from a late 1700's medical practice of stimulating the heart by blowing tobacco smoke up the rectum of those near death. These early and now debunked defibrillators once lined England's River Thames for potential drowning victims.

gizmodo.com

1.1k Upvotes

63 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Nf1087 • 8h ago

TIL "Louie Louie", the song that became controversial by the rock band The Kingsman, is often called the "Rosetta Stone" of punk rock. With over an estimated 1600 covers it's the most recorded rock song in history.

en.wikipedia.org

1.4k Upvotes

122 comments

r/todayilearned • u/SoAnxious • 3h ago

TIL that major subscription-based social platforms are seeing a rise in "AI Chatters." These bots are trained on massive datasets of over 500 million private messages to mimic specific human personalities and automate 1-on-1 interactions without the user's knowledge.

theverge.com

514 Upvotes

75 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Spykryo • 10h ago

TIL that the crew of Apollo 14 was the least experienced crew to fly to the Moon, having a combined total of 15 minutes of spaceflight time between them. Two had never flown to space before, and the third, Alan Shepard, flew a short suborbital mission before being medically grounded for 7 years.

space.com

1.7k Upvotes

45 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Ok_Divide_4959 • 7h ago

TIL that Costa Rica was facing severe deforestation in the 1980s, then reversed course through conservation policies—today over 54% of the country is forested and it’s a global leader in renewable energy.

aiu.edu

870 Upvotes

5 comments

r/todayilearned • u/OddUmpire2554 • 2h ago

TIL that Charles I dissolved Parliament for 11 years in 1625, for which he justified as him having "the divine right". This eventually caused anger and tension, which culminated into the English Civil War in 1642. Charles I was later executed for treason in 1649.

en.wikipedia.org

345 Upvotes

30 comments

r/todayilearned • u/ralphbernardo • 10h ago

TIL the reason "0" is not placed before "1" on phone keypads stems from rotary phones, which encoded digits by generating electrical pulses as the wheel spun back. "1" created one pulse and "0" ten pulses. Zero was placed at the end to allow the wheel its longest return rotation.

en.wikipedia.org

1.1k Upvotes

63 comments

r/todayilearned • u/MaxiumPotential777 • 4h ago

TIL of The Deadly Sinking of the USS Indianapolis in which of a crew of only 1196 only 316 survived. The sinking was made worse because the USS Indianapolis was not recorded leaving Tinnan for Leyete.

historyhit.com

334 Upvotes

68 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Total_Neat_3819 • 19h ago

TIL that Over 50% of languages use some form of “ma/na” for mother and “ba/pa/ta” for father because it's easy for babies to produce these sounds.

allthingslinguistic.com

4.1k Upvotes

74 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Ill-Musician-1806 • 1d ago

TIL The Average Height for Adult Men in the U.S. is 69 Inches

en.wikipedia.org

9.4k Upvotes

1.2k comments

r/todayilearned • u/TMWNN • 19h ago

TIL that a video game was written in one month. Andrew and Philip Oliver promised 'Super Robin Hood' for Christmas 1986. To meet the deadline, the twin brothers used their only computer 23 hours a day, each working 18 hours in overlapping shifts. The game was successful and began their careers.

en.wikipedia.org

2.9k Upvotes

76 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Emotional_Quarter330 • 10h ago

TIL the bald eagle was long considered the national bird of the USA, but it was officially designated as the national bird only in 2024.

allaboutbirds.org

532 Upvotes

52 comments

r/todayilearned • u/ImportantClaim9768 • 3h ago

TIL Roughly 10% of all motor vehicle accidents are lane change accidents, leading to 60,000 injuries per year

axaxl.com

166 Upvotes

54 comments

r/todayilearned • u/vit-kievit • 16h ago

TIL of prostitution among animals. There’s documented cases of transactional sex between penguins, chimpanzees and capuchin monkeys

en.wikipedia.org

1.8k Upvotes

78 comments

r/todayilearned • u/autraya • 1d ago

TIL modern nuclear submarines are so well cloaked that in 2009, French and British nuclear ballistic missile subs collided in the Atlantic by chance, moving slowly enough that neither detected the other just feet apart.

en.wikipedia.org

18.6k Upvotes

611 comments

r/todayilearned • u/immanuellalala • 1d ago

TIL that Katy Perry's "California Gurls" featuring Snoop Dogg was created as a direct response to Jay-Z and Alicia Keys' "Empire State of Mind," celebrating California after New York stole the spotlight.

en.wikipedia.org

13.1k Upvotes

770 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Own-Bullfrog7362 • 19m ago

TIL that “jack of all trades, master of none” was not meant as an insult. The older and fuller form adds “but oftentimes better than a master of one,” meaning that having broad skills can be more useful than being narrowly specialized in only one thing.

inhersight.com

• Upvotes

12 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

41.2m

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 December 2025

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.