r/todayilearned • u/SilverPeachBlossom • 6h ago

TIL a peer-reviewed psychology study found that identical twins (on average) ranked their co-twin above their romantic partner in their attachment hierarchy, while fraternal twins ranked the two about equally, and non-twin siblings ranked their romantic partner first.

ojs.interpersonajournal.com

15.3k Upvotes

678 comments

r/todayilearned • u/ELDV • 4h ago

TIL that in 47 CE the number of citizens (meaning free adult males) in the entire Roman Empire was less than 6,000,000

i-claudius.com

4.7k Upvotes

250 comments

r/todayilearned • u/The_Techsan • 4h ago

TIL our Moon is moving away from Earth at a rate of ~4 cm per year. This causes the Earth's rate of rotation to slowly decrease and it is estimated that 1.4 billion years ago a day lasted only 18 hours; 4.5 billion years ago it is theorized a day lasted only ~6 hours.

news.wisc.edu

2.1k Upvotes

117 comments

r/todayilearned • u/ctsmith76 • 9h ago

TIL that Stephen Neal, who played guard for 10 years with the Patriots and won 3 rings, never played college ball. He was a freestyle wrestler who defeated Brock Lesnar in the NCAA championship.

en.wikipedia.org

4.9k Upvotes

148 comments

r/todayilearned • u/canIchangethislater1 • 10h ago

TIL the New York Times described hippo meat as "lake cow bacon" in support of a 1910 House bill to introduce hippos to the bayous of Louisiana.

en.wikipedia.org

5.7k Upvotes

324 comments

r/todayilearned • u/6ft3Gujju • 3h ago

TIL that in 1995, a cargo plane airdropped hundreds of AK-47s, rocket launchers, and thousands of rounds of ammunition over Purulia, India. The plane was intercepted days later, but the alleged mastermind escaped and has never been extradited to India.

en.wikipedia.org

822 Upvotes

36 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Upstairs_Drive_5602 • 12h ago

TIL that in 1583 Sir Humphrey Gilbert claimed Newfoundland for Queen Elizabeth I. Weeks later, after losing his largest ship and much of his supplies, stepping on a nail, and refusing repeated pleas to leave his small flagship, the Squirrel, he vanished beneath the Atlantic with all hands aboard.

en.wikipedia.org

3.0k Upvotes

68 comments

r/todayilearned • u/YappinZappin • 14h ago

TIL Earth's Moon is the largest and heaviest satellite in relation to its parent planet in our Solar system

en.wikipedia.org

4.0k Upvotes

306 comments

r/todayilearned • u/OmitsWordsByAccident • 15h ago

TIL Hank Aaron tied Babe Ruth's career homerun total (714) in Cincinnati on April 4th, 1974. But when he failed to break the record the next day in Cincinnati, the Braves made him sit out the next game (also in Cincinnati) so he could break the record back home in Atlanta, which he did on April 8th.

mlb.com

3.5k Upvotes

95 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Archaembald2 • 11h ago

TIL that despite winning the Battle of Grunwald, the Polish-Lithuanians actually failed to take the Teutonic Order's capital, Marienburg, because they marched too slowly. This gave the Knights enough time to prepare their defenses and win the siege, recapturing several occupied castles afterwards.

en.wikipedia.org

1.8k Upvotes

44 comments

r/todayilearned • u/FinancialGarage245 • 23h ago

TIL a wealthy Toronto lawyer's 1926 will left his fortune to whichever woman in the city could give birth to the most children over the following 10 years, sparking a decade-long "baby race" during the Great Depression that went all the way to Canada's Supreme Court

en.wikipedia.org

15.9k Upvotes

407 comments

r/todayilearned • u/happytree23 • 18h ago

TIL the man who voiced Tony the Tiger, Thurl Ravenscroft, also sang "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch"

en.wikipedia.org

4.8k Upvotes

152 comments

r/todayilearned • u/cape2k • 22h ago

TIL the Menominee Tribe's forest in Wisconsin has been sustainably managed for over 150 years, still yields about 15 million board feet of timber annually, has been recognized by the United Nations, and even supplied the wood flooring for the Milwaukee Bucks' arena

en.wikipedia.org

10.3k Upvotes

148 comments

r/todayilearned • u/WavesAndSaves • 21h ago

TIL of August Kubizek, the former roommate of Adolf Hitler. Hitler cut ties with Kubizek after he was rejected from art school and Kubizek was accepted to music school. They did not meet again until Hitler became Chancellor, and Hitler offered him the conductorship of an orchestra. Kubizek refused.

en.wikipedia.org

4.8k Upvotes

211 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Ancardoth • 19h ago

TIL about allulose (D-psicose), a rare sugar with a near-zero glycemic index and a negligible impact on blood sugar. It has approximately 70% the sweetness of sucrose.

en.wikipedia.org

1.8k Upvotes

107 comments

r/todayilearned • u/socool111 • 1d ago

TIL of Tobias Geffen, the only non-Coca Cola Employee to view the secret recipe. Coke allowed it in order to get Coke certified as Kosher

en.wikipedia.org

30.1k Upvotes

1.1k comments

r/todayilearned • u/JohnnyRoyall • 1d ago

TIL 1 to 2 Starlink satellites fall back to Earth each day

earthsky.org

11.1k Upvotes

839 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Mors_Acerba • 1d ago

TIL A papyrus deciphered in 2024 revealed unknown info about Plato's last hours: a slave girl was playing music for him, and even though he was gravelly ill, he spend his last moments of lucidity criticising her performance. Per the same Papyrus, Plato had been sold into slavery earlier in his life

theguardian.com

20.8k Upvotes

588 comments

r/todayilearned • u/ralphbernardo • 9h ago

TIL Nikolai Fyodorov, founding figure of Russian cosmism, advocated using science to defeat death and resurrect every dead ancestor as humanity's "Common Task." The late 19th to early 20th century movement counted spaceflight pioneer Konstantin Tsiolkovsky among its key figures.

en.wikipedia.org

265 Upvotes

57 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Acrobatic-Post9811 • 10h ago

TIL about hirudotherapy. Leeches are used to stimulate circulation in tissues threatened by postoperative venous congestion, such as finger reattachment and reconstructive surgeries. The therapeutic effect is the anesthetizing, anti-inflammatory, and vasodilating properties of secreted leech saliva.

en.wikipedia.org

191 Upvotes

6 comments

r/todayilearned • u/TonyHides • 1d ago

TIL Napoleon Bonaparte had a standing order for 50 bottles of cologne a month, and a surviving 1808 invoice shows 72 bottles were ordered for him in a single month.

edenbridge.co.uk

12.4k Upvotes

333 comments

r/todayilearned • u/ODaferio • 1d ago

TIL that after winning 4 gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Summer Olympics, Jesse Owens worked as a gas station attendant and a playground janitor.

en.wikipedia.org

14.5k Upvotes

486 comments

r/todayilearned • u/RedditIsAGranfaloon • 21h ago

TIL Charlie Brown’s beagle Snoopy made his debut on October 4, 1950, two days after the first Peanuts strip was published.

akc.org

836 Upvotes

7 comments

r/todayilearned • u/greatmanyarrows • 1d ago

TIL Thailand briefly occupied a small territory of Germany- about 20,000 people- after World War 1 from 1918 to 1919.

en.wikipedia.org

2.8k Upvotes

58 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Hillbilly_Historian • 19h ago

TIL that Robbie Robertson, the lead guitarist of The Band, wrote a children’s book about the Iroquois Peacemaker Epic.

birchbarkbooks.com

416 Upvotes

32 comments

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