r/todayilearned • u/Neil118781 • 7h ago

TIL that at military school, Napoleon had a bitter classmate named Phélippeaux whom he constantly traded insults and fistfights with. 15 years later, Phélippeaux masterminded the defense at the Siege of Acre, dealing Napoleon the first major defeat of his military career.

en.wikipedia.org

18.2k Upvotes

431 comments

r/todayilearned • u/ManicMakerStudios • 4h ago

TIL the "Warwolf" trebuchet was built at the orders of King Edward I for the siege of Stirling Castle in Scotland and is considered the largest trebuchet ever made. It reportedly punched through the castle's walls "like an arrow through cloth".

en.wikipedia.org

6.1k Upvotes

301 comments

r/todayilearned • u/ezyr1der • 5h ago

TIL there are 3 sovereign nations that hold US zip codes. Palau, Federated States of Micronesia and the Republic of the Marshall Islands.

irs.gov

2.8k Upvotes

136 comments

r/todayilearned • u/haddock420 • 17h ago

TIL Adam DeVine was hit by a cement truck at age 11, breaking every bone in his legs. He spent two weeks in a coma, underwent 26 surgeries, and used a wheelchair during recovery. Today, he supports Children's Miracle Network Hospitals and regularly visits children in hospital.

en.wikipedia.org

46.0k Upvotes

634 comments

r/todayilearned • u/No_Issue2334 • 3h ago

TIL that during the American Revolution, Lord Dunmore, loyalist governor of Virginia, offered freedom to slaves and indentured servants if they served in British forces. George Washington called Lord Dunmore an "Arch Traitor to the Rights of Humanity" in response to Dunmore's Proclamation.

loc.gov

787 Upvotes

171 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Mr-Thuun • 14h ago

TIL That Saint Lucia is the only country in the world named after a historical woman.

worldatlas.com

6.8k Upvotes

339 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Infamous-Skippy • 14h ago

TIL the guy behind modern Breatharianism, the belief that you can survive off of only sunlight, air, and dust, was busted eating McDonald’s, and defended this by saying "All McDonalds are constructed on properties that are protected by 5th Dimensional high energy/spiritual portals."

en.wikipedia.org

5.4k Upvotes

236 comments

r/todayilearned • u/carboncopy95437 • 17h ago

TIL that when serial killer Ted Bundy was just 3 years old, his 15-year-old aunt awoke from a nap to find kitchen knives arranged around her bed, with young Bundy standing beside her, smiling.

en.wikipedia.org

9.1k Upvotes

686 comments

r/todayilearned • u/GhostOfAbydos • 6h ago

TIL In 2011 researchers on the OPERA experiment thought they recorded a neutrino moving faster than light, which would’ve violated special relativity. After months of looking for the problem, it turned out to be a loose cable.

en.wikipedia.org

854 Upvotes

39 comments

r/todayilearned • u/No_Idea_Guy • 21h ago

TIL in 1937 a woman boarded an empty Paris Metro carriage and was found stabbed to death less than 90 seconds later at the next stop. No one else was seen enter or leave the carriage. The victim had been working as a spy. Neither the murderer nor the method of escape was ever discovered.

en.wikipedia.org

9.3k Upvotes

225 comments

r/todayilearned • u/silencer_OO • 11h ago

TIL archaeologists discovered a rat’s nest inside a wall at Colonial Williamsburg that contained centuries-old artifacts, including a silver fork, accidentally preserved by rodents.

atlasobscura.com

1.3k Upvotes

18 comments

r/todayilearned • u/RedditIsAGranfaloon • 18h ago

TIL Monty Python's John Cleese’s family name was originally Cheese, but his father changed it from Cheese to Cleese to avoid being teased when he signed up to fight in World War I.

bbcamerica.com

2.5k Upvotes

102 comments

r/todayilearned • u/carboncopy95437 • 20h ago

TIL in 1939, 1000’s of children were evacuated from London to the English countryside to escape Nazi bombing. Three girls stayed at the Oxford home of author C.S. Lewis and helped inspire his classic novel The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, in which children are evacuated to a country house.

en.wikipedia.org

3.8k Upvotes

113 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Ill_Definition8074 • 10h ago

TIL The producer of the 1968 film Danger: Diabolik allocated 781 million Italian lire for the film's budget. However, using techniques he learned in his previous films, director Mario Bava completed the film on a final budget of only 200 million lire.

en.wikipedia.org

492 Upvotes

20 comments

r/todayilearned • u/carboncopy95437 • 1h ago

TIL the Univ. of Arkansas athletic teams were called the Cardinals until 1910, when students voted to rename them the Razorbacks. The change followed coach Hugo Bezdek’s description of his football team as playing like a “wild band of razorback hogs” after a hard-fought game against LSU in 1909.

en.wikipedia.org

• Upvotes

6 comments

r/todayilearned • u/wholewheatscythe • 9h ago

TIL that the Chief of Clan MacKay of Scotland, the Lord Reay, is a Dutch Baron, and his ancestor, Aeneas MacKay Jr., was once the Prime Minister of the Netherlands.

en.wikipedia.org

291 Upvotes

41 comments

r/todayilearned • u/FuckASchwarzenegger • 20h ago

PDF TIL Danish is unusually reluctant to respell foreign words: a Nordic study of newspapers from 2000 found that only 7% of modern loanwords were adapted to Danish spelling, compared with 17% in Swedish, 44% in Norwegian and 48% in Icelandic. Danish also had the highest proportion of English loanwords

helda.helsinki.fi

1.9k Upvotes

473 comments

r/todayilearned • u/RaccoonCityTacos • 1d ago

TIL that in 1941 the National Park Service established 16 "mental healing" camps in national parks for U.S. servicemen to use for rest and recovery before being redeployed to the war. By the end of WWII, 33 camps were set up, including those in Yosemite and the Grand Canyon.

nps.gov

4.7k Upvotes

47 comments

r/todayilearned • u/60s_timer • 15h ago

TIL the Beach Boys were inspired from the 1965 Beatles' album Rubber Soul to form their 1966 album Pet Sounds, which inspired the Beatles to form their 1967 album Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

faroutmagazine.co.uk

486 Upvotes

95 comments

r/todayilearned • u/DrakeSavory • 1d ago

TIL that a major fire occurred on the American aircraft carrier USS Oriskany when a seaman accidentally lit a parachute flare and in a panic threw it in a locker where hundreds of flares were stored. Later the Oriskany would be the first American warship to be converted into an artificial reef.

en.wikipedia.org

2.8k Upvotes

138 comments

r/todayilearned • u/sniperx1010 • 1h ago

TIL Kentucky Fried Chicken released 3 Christmas albums ifrom 1966-1969. KFC commissioned Christmas records featuring traditional holiday music, including "Christmas Eve with Colonel Sanders" and "Christmas Day with Colonel Sanders"

bsnpubs.com

• Upvotes

8 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Alarming-Studio-720 • 1d ago

TIL that in Japanese folklore, Kuchisake-onna is a ghost woman whose mouth is slit from ear to ear. She asks people, “Am I pretty?” Say no, and she kills you. Say yes, and she reveals her mouth and asks again. Say yes a second time, and she may cut your mouth to match hers.

en.wikipedia.org

11.0k Upvotes

913 comments

r/todayilearned • u/DrakeSavory • 1h ago

TIL that the inspiration for Make-A-Wish was from a boy in Phoenix with leukemia who wanted to be a police officer and the Department of Public Safety gave him an experience. The first official Make-A-Wish child was similarly a boy with leukemia from Phoenix who wanted to be a firefighter.

en.wikipedia.org

• Upvotes

0 comments

r/todayilearned • u/mahrogamers • 11h ago

TIL that in 1928 Nikola Tesla was granted a patent for a "helicopter-plane," a flying machine designed to take off and land vertically and then fly horizontally using the same propulsion devices

davidjkent-writer.com

162 Upvotes

19 comments

r/todayilearned • u/AetheriaNox • 1d ago

TIL Highway hypnosis, also known as white line fever, is an altered mental state in which an automobile driver can drive safely and correctly over long distances without consciously remembering having done so.

en.wikipedia.org

23.5k Upvotes

1.2k comments

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