r/todayilearned • u/Sebastianlim • 14h ago

TIL that in 2016, a Chinese artist spent 3 days building a $15,000 LEGO statue or Nick Wilde from Zootopia. Shortly after it was put on display, a 4-year-old boy accidentally knocked it over, destroying it. The artist refused an offer of compensation from the parents.

abcnews.com

17.8k Upvotes

872 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Sandstorm400 • 11h ago

TIL that in 2014, a recall was issued for about 2.2 million bean bag chairs that had zippers on them after two children were found dead inside two of the chairs, having suffocated from lack of air and from inhaling the chair's foam beads.

cpsc.gov

13.7k Upvotes

684 comments

r/todayilearned • u/TooKreamy4U • 22h ago

TIL In 2012, an Irish mother delivered her first twin prematurely, and her contractions stopped. This allowed the second twin to stay safely inside the womb for another 87 days. This rare occurrence is known as a delayed-interval delivery. It broke the previous world record of 84 days.

irishamerica.com

11.7k Upvotes

267 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Gnomeslikeprofit • 10h ago

TIL that the "pre-filled" tax return is a new innovation in the tax world used by 90% of OECD countries. Gov't. administrators pre-fill a tax return based on data collected. In China, 85% of VAT refund applications info is pre-filled. The IRS, the USA's tax agency, does not offer pre-filled returns.

oecd.org

8.2k Upvotes

843 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Tall-Run-5511 • 7h ago

TIL Disneyland originally used real human skeletons provided by the UCLA Medical Center in the Pirates of the Caribbean ride because 1960s fake bones weren't convincing enough

sfgate.com

6.8k Upvotes

328 comments

r/todayilearned • u/obalovatyk • 22h ago

TIL Up until 1981 Boeing used depleted uranium as counter weights in parts of their 747’s

simpleflying.com

6.0k Upvotes

305 comments

r/todayilearned • u/ansyhrrian • 12h ago

TIL that in 2010, UCF professor Richard Quinn uncovered a massive cheating scandal by analyzing statistical anomalies in exam scores, prompting 205 students to come forward and forcing all 600 to retake the exam.

youtube.com

5.7k Upvotes

664 comments

r/todayilearned • u/AetheriaNox • 14h ago

TIL in 2016, a sweet shop owner in Pakistan confessed to mixing a highly toxic pesticide into the sweets after an argument with his brother and co-owner. From 20 April to 8 May 2016, at least 33 people, including five children, died from the purposely poisoned baked confection.

en.wikipedia.org

3.4k Upvotes

113 comments

r/todayilearned • u/HolyCowAnyOldAccName • 14h ago

TIL you could fit every planet in the Solar System between Earth and the Moon

skyatnightmagazine.com

3.3k Upvotes

329 comments

r/todayilearned • u/MembershipHuman4837 • 17h ago

Herbert Hoover TIL that Lou Hoover - Henry Hoover's wife - had a tradition of leaving one chair empty whenever she entertained company, as a reminder of ongoing child poverty.

en.wikipedia.org

3.0k Upvotes

126 comments

r/todayilearned • u/ComfortableGreySloth • 17h ago

TIL about heraldic hatching, a historical method of representing color without color.

en.wikipedia.org

2.9k Upvotes

85 comments

r/todayilearned • u/bastugubbar • 16h ago

TIL Albert Einstein, besides his work as a physicist and mathematician was also a Fridge engineer. Together with a former student Leo Szilard he helped invent several new technologies in refrigeration and jointly held 45 patents, including a design for a fridge with no moving parts.

en.wikipedia.org

2.6k Upvotes

39 comments

r/todayilearned • u/CyberpunkSunrise • 11h ago

TIL that the 2011 dark/action comedy film “30 Minutes or Less” mirrors a real-life event where a pizza delivery driver was forced to wear a bomb collar and rob a bank, ultimately dying when the bomb detonated, though the filmmakers denied knowledge of the real-life story.

en.wikipedia.org

2.5k Upvotes

175 comments

r/todayilearned • u/NetflixSux247 • 15h ago

TIL the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Movie pitch was to have starred comedians Sam Kinison, Gallagher, Bobcat Goldthwait and Billy Crystal in green make-up as the turtles.

en.wikipedia.org

1.4k Upvotes

204 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Citrus2015 • 19h ago

TIL: Eumenes of Cardia who went from being Alexander the Great's secretary to defeating one of Alexander's greatest generals in his first major battle

en.wikipedia.org

1.2k Upvotes

73 comments

r/todayilearned • u/AetheriaNox • 16h ago

TIL the longest-standing record chronicled in The Guinness Book of Records belongs to the monk, St Simeon the Stylite (c. AD 386–459), who spent approximately 39 years on a stone pillar in Syria. His purpose was self-persecution for people's sins, and to be nearer God.

guinnessworldrecords.com

1.1k Upvotes

158 comments

r/todayilearned • u/licecrispies • 19h ago

TIL that earthquakes can trigger outbreaks of lasting vertigo in humans, which is known as Post-Earthquake Dizziness Syndrome

aonojournal.com

772 Upvotes

34 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Financial-Horror1844 • 5h ago

TIL during the Spanish-American War, approximately 1,100 men died in combat while 17,000 died from disease.

en.wikipedia.org

733 Upvotes

44 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Finnish_Swede • 16h ago

TIL that King Charles III’s paternal grandfather, Prince Andrew of Greece, was a Major General in the Greco-Turkish War and got court-martialed and exiled after being blamed for losing the important Battle of the Sakarya which caused the Greek defeat in the war.

en.wikipedia.org

490 Upvotes

45 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Impressive-Mix5605 • 19h ago

TIL that in 1814, British naturalist James Sowerby made a sword from meteoritic iron as a gift for Russian Emperor Alexander I.

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

463 Upvotes

20 comments

r/todayilearned • u/carboncopy95437 • 14h ago

TIL Russian Greco-Roman wrestler Aleksandr Karelin won three Olympic gold medals and nine world championships, retiring with 887 wins and just two losses. His final defeat came against American Rulon Gardner at the 2000 Olympics by one point in a controversial call.

en.wikipedia.org

404 Upvotes

73 comments

r/todayilearned • u/carboncopy95437 • 6h ago

TIL golfer Tom Morris Jr. won four consecutive British Opens in 1868, 1869, 1870 and 1872. (There was no tournament in 1871.) He won his first at just 17 and all four before turning 22. In 1875 his wife and baby died during a difficult delivery. He died four months later. He was only 24.

en.wikipedia.org

362 Upvotes

21 comments

r/todayilearned • u/NBrief • 9h ago

TIL that Finnish physicist Tuomo Suntola developed atomic layer deposition technology in the 1970s, a process now used to manufacture the ultra-thin material layers found in modern microprocessors and digital memory devices.

en.wikipedia.org

243 Upvotes

2 comments

r/todayilearned • u/HowDareYou888 • 15h ago

TIL that during the 1870–71 siege of Paris, homing pigeons were taken out of the city by balloon and returned carrying messages on microfilm. The messages were then projected onto a screen so clerks could transcribe them.

en.wikipedia.org

166 Upvotes

6 comments

r/todayilearned • u/SamsonFox2 • 17h ago

TIL that the grand opera "Faust" was so popular in early decades of NYC's Metropolitan Opera that it used to be nicknamed "Faustspielhaus". It remains the fifth most performed opera overall.

en.wikipedia.org

123 Upvotes

5 comments

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