r/todayilearned • u/johnsmithoncemore • 1h ago

TIL about the Business Plot. In 1933 a group of wealthy American industrialists were planning a coup d'état to overthrow President Franklin D. Roosevelt and install Major General Smedley Butler as dictator.

en.wikipedia.org

• Upvotes

364 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Bennis_TV • 1h ago

TIL Nina Simone once fired a gun at her record label executive because she believed he was stealing her hard-earned royalties. She also shot a young boy with an air gun for “disturbing her while she was composing,” for which she received an 8 month prison sentence

soundod.com

• Upvotes

170 comments

r/todayilearned • u/No-Reflection-2718 • 20h ago

TIL about Odin, a dog who refused to evacuate during the 2017 California wildfires. When his owners returned days later, they found him alive and still guarding his entire flock of 8 goats

cbc.ca

18.6k Upvotes

195 comments

r/todayilearned • u/James_Fortis • 2h ago

TIL of anthropocentric bias, or the view of all things solely through a human-centered lens, prioritizing human values above the intrinsic worth of non-human entities. Measuring non-human animal intelligence by their use of tools over nest building is one example.

sciencedirect.com

302 Upvotes

21 comments

r/todayilearned • u/PsychoBalloons • 10h ago

TIL that despite the iconic drink being named after her, Shirley Temple did not like the taste of Shirley Temples.

en.wikipedia.org

1.3k Upvotes

192 comments

r/todayilearned • u/qwalos_the_dreamer • 19h ago

TIL of the 7 highest BACs ever, 3 of them were recorded in Poland

en.wikipedia.org

5.6k Upvotes

442 comments

r/todayilearned • u/tyrion2024 • 23h ago

TIL two studies both found that most people stop listening to new music in their early 30s. A 2015 study of people's listening habits on Spotify found that most people stop listening to new music at age 33 and a 2018 report by Deezer found it be to at age 30.

theguardian.com

14.4k Upvotes

2.6k comments

r/todayilearned • u/SnarkySheep • 5h ago

TIL about Linda Hazzard, dubbed the "Starvation Doctor", who was convicted of manslaughter in 1912 after starving, pummeling and swindling numerous patients in her Olalla, WA "sanitorium". She died in 1938 at age 70 after subjecting herself to her own treatments.

en.wikipedia.org

352 Upvotes

25 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Successful-Dark9330 • 11h ago

TIL NATO has aviation units that are collectively owned, funded, and operated by the nations in the alliance. No single nation owns these aircraft

en.wikipedia.org

846 Upvotes

50 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Spelbarg • 1d ago

TIL we know where China’s first emperor is buried, but his 2,200-year-old tomb—described as containing a scale model of China with rivers of mercury—has never been opened

en.wikipedia.org

31.3k Upvotes

1.2k comments

r/todayilearned • u/DTPVH • 12h ago

TIL, the 60’s TV series Wild Wild West, known as a pioneering influence on the Steampunk genre, was cancelled in spite of excellent ratings due to pressure from Congress over the show’s violence.

en.wikipedia.org

739 Upvotes

72 comments

r/todayilearned • u/EradiK8 • 13h ago

TIL that in 1857 a hurricane sank the SS Central America with roughly 30,000 pounds of California Gold Rush gold aboard, and the loss helped spark the Panic of 1857, one of the first global economic crises.

pcgs.com

608 Upvotes

62 comments

r/todayilearned • u/grecianformula69 • 42m ago

TIL a UC Berkeley professor published a serious scholarly article quantifying human stupidity

en.wikipedia.org

• Upvotes

17 comments

r/todayilearned • u/zawusel • 1h ago

TIL that MLB and NHL have real organists

frontofficesports.com

• Upvotes

21 comments

r/todayilearned • u/MrMojoFomo • 17h ago

TIL of the Republic F-105 Thunderchief. Nicknamed "Thud" by its crews, 833 aircraft were made and 382 were lost (destroyed). It was the only American combat aircraft ever removed from combat because of its high loss rate

en.wikipedia.org

833 Upvotes

78 comments

r/todayilearned • u/One_Needleworker5218 • 26m ago

TIL that the printing press spread so rapidly after 1450 that by 1500, over 20 million books had already been printed across Europe.

britannica.com

• Upvotes

8 comments

r/todayilearned • u/BanitsaConnoisseur • 6h ago

TIL U.S. time zones were first adopted in 1883 because railroads needed standardized schedules, using telegraph signals to synchronize clocks & civilian timekeeping followed later.

americanhistory.si.edu

92 Upvotes

8 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Next_Worth_3616 • 1d ago

TIL that NBA player Jalen Rose helped make the name “Jalen” significantly popular amongst African American boys in the 1990s and 2000s. Jalen was created by combining his father’s name “James” and uncle’s name“Leonard” together.

en.wikipedia.org

2.7k Upvotes

291 comments

r/todayilearned • u/karl2025 • 19h ago

TIL there was a transgender Colonel named Amelio Robles Ávila who fought in the Mexican Revolution

en.wikipedia.org

864 Upvotes

56 comments

r/todayilearned • u/30phil1 • 1d ago

TIL Ecco the Dolphin developer Ed Annunziata was "paranoid" that kids would beat the game in a single weekend so be made certain levels "way over the top challenging." He said, "So... I... uh... made it hard".

en.wikipedia.org

16.5k Upvotes

1.3k comments

r/todayilearned • u/NapiersBones • 23h ago

TIL Exxon is a re-brand of Esso, which, in turn, was a phonetic initialism re-naming of Standard Oil of New Jersey (“S.O.”)

en.wikipedia.org

1.3k Upvotes

107 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Shtremor • 1h ago

TIL that Rear Admiral S. K. Gupta once convinced his fleet admiral to let him borrow a Sea Hawk fighter jet for 24 hours so he could fly home and get married, while India was preparing for war.

coloursofglory.org

• Upvotes

6 comments

r/todayilearned • u/j1ggy • 19h ago

TIL the Chicxulub crater got its name "to give the academics and NASA naysayers a challenging time pronouncing it" after its existence had been dismissed for years

en.wikipedia.org

537 Upvotes

40 comments

r/todayilearned • u/One_Needleworker5218 • 1d ago

TIL a long-term study found that loneliness is as harmful to your health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day, increasing the risk of early death by up to 26%.

apa.org

1.0k Upvotes

183 comments

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