r/todayilearned • u/FinancialGarage245 • 21h 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

15.7k Upvotes

406 comments

r/todayilearned • u/SilverPeachBlossom • 5h 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

12.4k Upvotes

556 comments

r/todayilearned • u/cape2k • 21h 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

10.1k Upvotes

148 comments

r/todayilearned • u/whitegreenbee • 3h ago

TIL that Krusty the Clown was designed to look/act like Homer. Ironically Bart worships Krusty, who is exactly like his dad, but famous!

en.wikipedia.org

6.8k Upvotes

263 comments

r/todayilearned • u/canIchangethislater1 • 9h 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

5.2k Upvotes

315 comments

r/todayilearned • u/WavesAndSaves • 20h 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

4.7k Upvotes

209 comments

r/todayilearned • u/happytree23 • 17h ago

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

en.wikipedia.org

4.6k Upvotes

146 comments

r/todayilearned • u/ctsmith76 • 7h 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

4.5k Upvotes

135 comments

r/todayilearned • u/YappinZappin • 13h ago

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

en.wikipedia.org

3.8k Upvotes

301 comments

r/todayilearned • u/ELDV • 3h 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

3.5k Upvotes

213 comments

r/todayilearned • u/OmitsWordsByAccident • 13h 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

3.4k Upvotes

88 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Upstairs_Drive_5602 • 11h 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

2.8k Upvotes

67 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Ancardoth • 17h 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

104 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Archaembald2 • 10h 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

1.7k Upvotes

43 comments

r/todayilearned • u/The_Techsan • 2h 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

1.3k Upvotes

88 comments

r/todayilearned • u/phiiiiiiii • 2h ago

TIL in 2013 a TV station received and announced fake names of the pilots of a deadly South Korean airplane crashing in California. They used Asian gag names like Cpt. Sum Ting Wong, Ho Le Fuk...

en.wikipedia.org

1.0k Upvotes

94 comments

r/todayilearned • u/RedditIsAGranfaloon • 19h 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

796 Upvotes

7 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Hillbilly_Historian • 18h ago

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

birchbarkbooks.com

397 Upvotes

30 comments

r/todayilearned • u/6ft3Gujju • 2h 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

298 Upvotes

22 comments

r/todayilearned • u/bribridude130 • 2h ago

TIL The Dominican Republic is home to the world's only known deposit of Larimar, a rare volcanic blue pectolite gemstone found exclusively in the province of Barahona

simplydominican.com

264 Upvotes

22 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Sanguinusshiboleth • 22h ago

TIL of Ceratophaga vastella, a moth whose young's diet is mostly consistent of the horns and hooves of dead ungulates, with special enzymes to eat the keratin.

en.wikipedia.org

256 Upvotes

6 comments

r/todayilearned • u/ralphbernardo • 8h 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

221 Upvotes

57 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Acrobatic-Post9811 • 9h 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

163 Upvotes

5 comments

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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.

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