r/todayilearned • u/carboncopy95437 • 2h ago

TIL in 1973, a 2-man submarine laying cables became entangled and trapped 1,575 feet deep in the Atlantic. An international rescue effort brought the men to the surface after more than three days, with only minutes of air remaining. It remains the deepest successful underwater rescue in history.

en.wikipedia.org

9.0k Upvotes

163 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Upstairs_Drive_5602 • 2h ago

TIL that America's first major bank robbery, in 1798, saw $162,821 stolen from a Philadelphia bank. The blacksmith who had fitted its vault locks was falsely imprisoned, while the real robber gave himself away by depositing the stolen money back into the bank.

en.wikipedia.org

2.1k Upvotes

54 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Electronic_Cause_796 • 6h ago

TIL that in 1965, the CIA and India's Intelligence Bureau secretly tried to install plutonium-powered spy gear nearly 26,000 feet up Nanda Devi to monitor China's nuclear program. A blizzard forced them to abandon it, and when they returned, it had vanished. Multiple recovery missions failed still.

warontherocks.com

4.4k Upvotes

142 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Better_March5308 • 10h ago

TIL 14,300 years ago a solar storm that was at least 10 times more intense than the Carrington Event of 1859 occurred

discovermagazine.com

5.5k Upvotes

481 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Sebastianlim • 15h ago

TIL that Ariana Richards, who played Lex Murphy in Jurassic Park, auditioned for the part by sending a video tape of her screaming. Spielberg chose her after her audition scream was the only one was loud enough to wake up his sleeping wife, and cause her to go check on their children.

galleryariana.com

15.2k Upvotes

285 comments

r/todayilearned • u/typhoidtimmy • 7h ago

TIL that the ‘Art from Medina Sod’ bowling shirt Jeff Bridges wears in The Big Lebowski was an actual person who rolled in 1968 and was league champion. 30 years later his old bowling shirt wound up in a movie thanks to thrift stores

bamfstyle.com

2.2k Upvotes

66 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Ophelia_Y2K • 1h ago

TIL the lowest BMI publicly on record was 6.7 in an anorexia patient. This is equivalent to someone weighing about 39lbs at 5'4 (17.7kg/163cm), or 49.5lbs at 6ft (22.5kg/183cm)

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

• Upvotes

59 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Pitiful_Magazine_805 • 1h ago

TIL about Isao Inokuma, an Olympic gold medalist judoka who died by commiting seppuku in 2001. It is the last notable case of seppuku.

en.wikipedia.org

• Upvotes

65 comments

r/todayilearned • u/carboncopy95437 • 9h ago

TIL the last eight years of Sweden’s King Charles XIII’s life, his health deteriorated badly after repeated strokes, severe memory loss and eventually he could barely communicate. Napoleon’s former marshal effectively ran the country while Charles remained king in name. Charles died in 1818.

en.wikipedia.org

2.4k Upvotes

68 comments

r/todayilearned • u/jacknunn • 4h ago

TIL that the very first commercial flight to leave London Heathrow Airport was a converted WWII Lancaster bomber named Starlight. In 1946 it flew passengers to Buenos Aires, taking over 35 hours

heathrow.com

714 Upvotes

39 comments

r/todayilearned • u/carboncopy95437 • 5h ago

TIL Jazmin Grace Grimaldi, an American actress, is the daughter of Prince Albert II of Monaco and granddaughter of Hollywood legend Grace Kelly. She is not in Monaco’s line of succession because her parents, Albert and American Tamara Rotolo, were never married.

en.wikipedia.org

927 Upvotes

80 comments

r/todayilearned • u/YappinZappin • 2h ago

TIL Chinese saying "ten thousand lǐ" describing distances understood to be immeasurable is often applied to the Great Wall of China - but the Wall is actually over 4 times as long at 42,000 lǐ (21,000 km)

en.wikipedia.org

547 Upvotes

19 comments

r/todayilearned • u/MrMojoFomo • 2h ago

TIL of the Oath of Vengence. Part of the Mormon (LDS) church's official doctrine until 1927, it required adherents to swear to pray to "avenge the blood of prophets" and keep oath secret

en.wikipedia.org

450 Upvotes

49 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Jabrono • 9h ago

TIL that the Chevy Suburban has a Hollywood Star, the first dedicated to an inanimate object. It has been featured in 1750 films, has made a movie appearance every year since 1952

en.wikipedia.org

1.8k Upvotes

75 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Skychu768 • 10h ago

TIL British Isrаelism is a pseudohistorical belief that the people of Great Britain are "genetically, racially, and linguistically the direct descendants" of the Ten Lost Tribes of ancient Isrаel. It was popular during the 19th century with numerous organizations being set up throughout the Empire.

en.wikipedia.org

1.3k Upvotes

222 comments

r/todayilearned • u/johnsmithoncemore • 7h ago

8 years TIL that for 15 years the British Royal Family owned the former yacht of Hermann Goering, Carin II. General Montgomery gifted the ship to then Princess Elizabeth, who renamed it after her son Prince Charles. It became the flagship of the British Army of the Rhine until 1960.

en.wikipedia.org

757 Upvotes

36 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Greene_Mr • 10h ago

TIL future President Chester Arthur kept a man employed under him in the New York Customs House despite the job being Republican patronage and the employee in question being a Democrat because Arthur was a huge fan of the man's books. The employee? Herman Melville.

lansingburghhistoricalsociety.org

1.2k Upvotes

41 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Hellaciousstasis • 16h ago

TIL that a seriel killer murdered his final victim by killing a fellow inmate using C4 explossives.

en.wikipedia.org

3.4k Upvotes

175 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Bomber_Max • 7h ago

TIL that the most intense meteor shower in recorded history was the 1833 Leonid Meteor Storm where the peak recorded intensity was up to 150,000 meteors per hour.

gardenastronomer.com

557 Upvotes

32 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Aleksandr_Ulyev • 5h ago

TIL that Mikhail Kutuzov, a field Marshal of the Russian Empire, got headshoted twice in his career during the battles, what should have been lethal, but he was saved eventually by a field doctor Jean Masso. He would later die of cold at the age of 65 while still serving in the army

en.wikipedia.org

294 Upvotes

15 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Ophelia_Y2K • 20h ago

TIL the lightest recorded adult, Lucía Zárate, weighed just 4.7lbs (2.1kg) and stood at about 2'3 tall (68cm)

en.wikipedia.org

4.1k Upvotes

222 comments

r/todayilearned • u/UltimateOreo • 1d ago

TIL frisson, the tingling and goosebumps music can produce in about 50% of people isn’t uniquely musical. It can also be triggered by intense moments of understanding, like during a scientific breakthrough, or during a powerful religious ceremony.

en.wikipedia.org

18.0k Upvotes

1.2k comments

r/todayilearned • u/PerezGosented • 1d ago

TIL Mosul Dam in Iraq, holding back enough water to threaten up to 1.5 million people, sits on dissolving gypsum bedrock and requires 24/7 cement injection just to exist

en.wikipedia.org

15.1k Upvotes

397 comments

r/todayilearned • u/ProfessionalGear3020 • 23h ago

TIL former contract killer turned boxing coach Dennis "Cutty" Wise from The Wire is named after a real killer who got out of jail, quit gang life, and abecame an anti-violence advocate. However, the real Dennis Wise was only released from prison in 2017, nearly a decade after The Wire happened.

en.wikipedia.org

3.2k Upvotes

86 comments

r/todayilearned • u/signaldecoderr • 1d ago

TIL NASA lost contact with a spacecraft for over 12 years, only for an amateur astronomer to rediscover its signal in 2018.

science.nasa.gov

15.8k Upvotes

88 comments

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