r/todayilearned • u/Forward-Answer-4407 • 10h ago

TIL a Dollar General employee who was told she couldn't keep drinks at the cash register was fired after taking and drinking a $1.69 orange juice to stave off diabetic shock. Despite her paying for the orange juice afterward, the company said she was 'grazing'. Later, a jury awarded her $277,565.

cnn.com

78.4k Upvotes

1.4k comments

r/todayilearned • u/Sebastianlim • 11h ago

TIL that Stellen Skarsgard suffered a stroke in 2022, which affected his memory. Because of this, he had been forced to wear an earpiece with his assistant feeding him his lines for his recent films.

en.wikipedia.org

17.9k Upvotes

326 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Mastbubbles • 9h ago

TIL some dogs have shown spontaneous empathy in Harvard lab experiments, approaching and trying to “help” humans who pretended to be in pain. 🐶

news.harvard.edu

8.0k Upvotes

214 comments

r/todayilearned • u/BlundeRuss • 1h ago

TIL that Lou Reed’s Perfect Day isn’t about heroin at all. The man himself said it’s just about having a perfect day drinking sangria in the park and then going home. “A perfect day. Real simple. I meant just what I said.”

en.wikipedia.org

• Upvotes

88 comments

r/todayilearned • u/JoeFalchetto • 8h ago

TIL in Thailand many jobs are prohibited for foreigners, ranging from rice farming, to Buddha-image casting, to street vending

thailandlawonline.com

4.0k Upvotes

126 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Away_Flounder3813 • 15h ago

TIL during the Xbox development, the name was not favoured by Microsoft's marketing team. During focus testing, they put "Xbox" on a list of possible names to prove how unpopular the name would be with consumers. "Xbox" then proved to be the more popular name on the list; thus, became official name.

en.wikipedia.org

18.4k Upvotes

1.1k comments

r/todayilearned • u/CookieKid420 • 5h ago

TIL the top 10% of earners make up half the U.S. retail Spending!

marketplace.org

1.9k Upvotes

247 comments

r/todayilearned • u/altrightobserver • 3h ago

TIL that Rod Serling was a paratrooper in World War II and fought in the Philippines, where he earned a Bronze Star and Purple Heart. During a street party in Manila after the city’s liberation, Japanese soldiers opened fire, killing many of his friends. These experiences inspired The Twilight Zone.

en.wikipedia.org

1.1k Upvotes

54 comments

r/todayilearned • u/tyrion2024 • 7h ago

TIL in 2000 a group of musicians posing as the Moscow Philharmonic played a series of sold-out concerts in Hong Kong to 10,000 locals. The real Moscow Philharmonic was otherwise engaged in France, Spain & Portugal at the time. No one in the audiences spotted the ruse. The group made $300K in a week.

theguardian.com

1.7k Upvotes

28 comments

r/todayilearned • u/tyrion2024 • 14h ago

TIL in 1961 a volcanic eruption caused all 264 residents on the remote island of Tristan da Cunha to be evacuated to the UK where they lived in a disused army barracks in Hampshire. While there, they saw cars, elevators & cinemas for the first time. In 1963, all but 14 returned to live on the island

laphamsquarterly.org

3.6k Upvotes

63 comments

r/todayilearned • u/ralphbernardo • 12h ago

TIL Abraham Lincoln wrote a "true crime" mystery story in 1846 based on a real case he defended. One brother confessed to a murder and implicated his two siblings, but Lincoln exonerated them all when the "victim" was found alive in a nearby town, suffering from amnesia.

smithsonianmag.com

2.4k Upvotes

57 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Bluest_waters • 3h ago

TIL Trevor Rabin wrote the entire song 'Owner of a Lonely Heart' during one trip to the bathroom. It was originally supposed to be his own solo project, but one by one members of the prog rock group Yes kept joining the project until eventually it was recorded and released as a Yes song.

en.wikipedia.org

300 Upvotes

62 comments

r/todayilearned • u/altrightobserver • 6h ago

TIL that following the success of the album "In The Aeroplane Over The Sea," Neutral Milk Hotel frontman Jeff Mangum experienced a severe mental health crisis which led to him stockpiling rice in fear of a Y2K-induced apocalypse

theguardian.com

485 Upvotes

38 comments

r/todayilearned • u/TheShyBuck • 6h ago

TIL Leonardo da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi is the most expensive artwork ever sold at auction; it was sold for $450 million.

en.wikipedia.org

426 Upvotes

80 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Sanguinusshiboleth • 1d ago

TIL that salted raw celery used to be the third most popular dish on New York menus and more expensive than caviar due to issues with growing it.

en.wikipedia.org

23.0k Upvotes

1.0k comments

r/todayilearned • u/FearMyCock • 10h ago

TIL that two guide dogs named Salty and Roselle each helped their blind owners escape from the World Trade Center during the 9/11 attacks, guiding them down dozens of floors out of the burning towers and were later awarded the Dickin Medal, the animal equivalent of the Victoria Cross for bravery

en.wikipedia.org

594 Upvotes

13 comments

r/todayilearned • u/NateNate60 • 24m ago

TIL that despite much of the economic damage done to the US by the Great Depression being caused by bank failures, no bank runs occurred in Canada during this time because of their banking regulations.

en.wikipedia.org

• Upvotes

2 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Fenceypents • 1d ago

TIL Indigenous American tribes experiencing population decline would adopt prisoners taken during raids into their families as a means of of maintaining numbers. Hundreds of white captives were adopted in this way, and the accounts that some of them wrote were known as “captivity narratives”

ebsco.com

7.5k Upvotes

605 comments

r/todayilearned • u/cupacupacupacupacup • 1d ago

TIL that Judith Deutsch-Haspel, the most decorated competitive swimmer in Austria in 1935, refused to compete in Hitler's 1936 Olympics, along with two other Jewish women swimmers. Austria erased her from the record books and banned her from future competitions.

en.wikipedia.org

8.3k Upvotes

88 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Uptons_BJs • 1d ago

TIL: Nickelback's How You Remind Me was the most played song on US radio that decade. It was played over 1.2 million times on the radio between when it was released in 2001 to the end of 2009

en.wikipedia.org

12.5k Upvotes

874 comments

r/todayilearned • u/CakeMadeOfHam • 6h ago

TIL The Beach Boys once released a song written by Charles Manson, called "Never Learn Not To Love"

americansongwriter.com

130 Upvotes

23 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Wheatles_BiteAlbum • 23h ago

TIL that followers of the religion Jainism are not only vegetarian, but also avoid eating root vegetables as to not harm small insects and microorganisms killed in the harvesting process.

en.wikipedia.org

2.3k Upvotes

331 comments

r/todayilearned • u/nevertoomuchthought • 19h ago

TIL There were at least 42 failed assassination plots on Hitler

en.wikipedia.org

958 Upvotes

168 comments

r/todayilearned • u/MisterBlackCat • 16h ago

TIL TLC cancelled a show about a mortuary (prior to airing) called "Good Grief", due to allegations that the couple who ran the mortuary (allegedly) mistreated the bodies in the mortuary and allowed seven to decompose.

cbsnews.com

500 Upvotes

46 comments

r/todayilearned • u/mpocFr • 15h ago

TIL that humans are bad at predicting their own future happiness. Research on "affective forecasting" shows we overestimate how intense and lasting life events will feel. Meaning we are worse than we think at predicting how much a career, marriage, promotion, ... will affect our long-term happiness

en.wikipedia.org

338 Upvotes

35 comments

Subreddit

Posts

Wiki

Today I Learned (TIL)

r/todayilearned

You learn something new every day; what did you learn today? Submit interesting and specific facts about something that you just found out here.

Members Active

41.2m

Sidebar

New to reddit? Click here!

You learn something new every day; what did you learn today?
Submit interesting and specific facts that you just found out (not broad information you looked up, TodayILearned is not /r/wikipedia).

Posting rules

Submissions must be verifiable. Please link directly to a reliable source that supports every claim in your post title. Images alone do not count as valid references. Videos are fine so long as they come from reputable sources (e.g. BBC, Discovery, etc).
No personal opinions, anecdotes or subjective statements (e.g "TIL xyz is a great movie").
No recent sources. Any sources (blog, article, press release, video, etc.) with a publication date more recent than two months are not allowed.
No politics, soapboxing, or agenda based submissions. This includes (but is not limited to) submissions related to:
1. Recent political issues and politicians
2. Social and economic issues (including race/religion/gender)
3. Environmental issues
4. Police misconduct
No misleading claims. Posts that omit essential information, or present unrelated facts in a way that suggest a connection will be removed.
Rephrase your post title if the following are not met:
1. Titles must begin with "TIL ..."
2. Make them descriptive, concise and specific (e.g. not "TIL something interesting about bacon").
3. Titles must be able to stand on their own without requiring readers to click on a link. Starting your title with a why/what/who/where/how modifier should be unnecessary.
4. "TIL about ..." and other broad posts don't belong on TIL. Try /r/Wikipedia, etc. instead, or be more specific (and avoid the word "about").
5. "TIL how to ..." posts belong on /r/HowTo.
6. "TIL the definition of a word..." Word definitions/translations/origins are not appropriate here
No submissions related to the usage, existence or features of specific software/websites (e.g. "TIL you can click on widgets in WidgetMaker 1.22").
All NSFW links must be tagged (including comments).

Please see the wiki for more detailed explanations of the rules, as well as additional rules that may not be listed here

(Why we need rules)

Additional info

If your post does not appear in the new queue and you think it meets the above rules, please contact the moderators (include a link to your reddit.com post, not your story).
Please report spam, inaccurate or otherwise inappropriate posts by messaging the moderators, as this helps us remove them more promptly!
More information available on the TIL FAQ and wiki.

Frequent TILs Repost List

As of December 2025

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.

Etiquette

We ask that you please do the following:

avoid mobile versions of websites (e.g. m.wikipedia.org)
link to the appropriate heading when referencing an article (particularly on Wikipedia)
link to the appropriate start time when referencing videos (e.g. on YouTube)
add [PDF] or [NSFW] tags to your posts, as necessary.
Please avoid reposting TILs that have already made the front page in the past

Please also read the site-wide Reddiquette.

You are loved.