r/todayilearned • u/SakuraHana2008 • 1d ago

TIL that Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, the Alphabet Song, Johnny Johnny, and Baa Baa Black Sheep were just the same song, and melodies were based on the classic children's song, “Ah! vous dirai-je, Maman”.

en.wikipedia.org

1.3k Upvotes

107 comments

r/todayilearned • u/finza_prey • 1d ago

TIL Air France Flight 4590 crashed into an airport hotel after it ran over a metal strip, causing its fuel tank to explode during take off killing all 109 people aboard and 4 on the ground making it the only Concorde crash after 24 years of no fatal incidents

en.wikipedia.org

2.8k Upvotes

155 comments

r/todayilearned • u/MrMojoFomo • 1d ago

TIL that the average American armed forces inductee in WWII was 26 years old, 5' 8" tall, 144 pounds, and had 9 years of formal schooling

saturdayeveningpost.com

16.2k Upvotes

1.1k comments

r/todayilearned • u/delano1998 • 16m ago

TIL that in 1993, a failed Malaysian pop singer-turned-shaman named Mona Fandey murdered a politician during a fake "money-falling" ritual where she promised him invincibility. She then went on a luxury shopping spree and got a facelift before being executed.

en.wikipedia.org

• Upvotes

8 comments

r/todayilearned • u/randobis • 23h ago

TIL the melody always associated with ancient Egypt was actually composed in 1893 by an American songwriter who became a US congressman

en.wikipedia.org

911 Upvotes

67 comments

r/todayilearned • u/ODaferio • 10m ago

TIL about the tobacco smoke enema, a medical "treatment" that was employed by European physicians to treat gut pain and resuscitate victims of near drowning. The practice appeared shortly after the import of Tobacco from the New World and was an established practice by the turn of the 19th century.

en.wikipedia.org

• Upvotes

3 comments

r/todayilearned • u/mvincen95 • 1d ago

TIL since they were standardized in 1963 only Nebraska has changed its two letter abbreviation. They changed from “NB” to “NE” to not be confused with “New Brunswick”

britannica.com

4.3k Upvotes

309 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Brutal_Deluxe_ • 1d ago

TIL the Witches of Subeshi are mummies of women who lived 2,500 years ago. When they were unearthed they were still wearing tall, pointed, felt hats over two feet high. Despite the nickname there is no evidence that the women were regarded as witches by their own community

en.wikipedia.org

3.9k Upvotes

41 comments

r/todayilearned • u/the-doctor-is-real • 1d ago

TIL The original Jungle Book was not just the story of Mowgli and the animals he met, but a collections of stories...and there was also a sequel as well!

en.wikipedia.org

1.6k Upvotes

50 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Sebastianlim • 22h ago

TIL that, during the ill-fated Polaris Expedition, William F. C. Nindemann became seperated from the expedition when an ice floe he was on broke off and drifted away. When he was rescued, and returned to America, Nindemann volunteered on a voyage searching for the still missing expedition.

en.wikipedia.org

553 Upvotes

7 comments

r/todayilearned • u/KillPatrick97 • 15h ago

TIL that the RAF put a 57 mm anti-tank gun in a Mosquito fighter-bomber to sink U-boats. The pilot had to fly a long, steady dive straight at the target, and the machine guns were kept only to help aim the big gun, which held just 25 shells.

historyofwar.org

130 Upvotes

16 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Downtown_Ebb9600 • 22h ago

TIL about Porcelain sickness (aka Porzellankrankheit in German or maladie de porcelaine in French )which was an obsessive 17th and 18th-century craze among European royalty and aristocrats to collect East Asian porcelain (white gold). It later trickled down to middle class as ‘Chinamania’.

asia-archive.si.edu

403 Upvotes

13 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Johannes_P • 14h ago

TIL about organ printing, or the use of 3D printers to generate organs and tissues by using a scaffold in biocompatible plastic on which cells are grown

en.wikipedia.org

86 Upvotes

3 comments

r/todayilearned • u/poptart2nd • 1d ago

Today I learned that descendants of the Hatfield and McCoy families were on an episode of the game show Family Feud

en.wikipedia.org

3.0k Upvotes

187 comments

r/todayilearned • u/iamveryDerp • 1d ago

TIL the rumor that the Geneva Conventions were drawn up because of Canadian military actions such as “showing no mercy” is false. “In this, the Canadians were by no means exceptional,” Burtch said. “Every combatant in the world wars did something similar.”

ctvnews.ca

3.0k Upvotes

425 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Fragrant-Upstairs932 • 1d ago

TIL that there have only ever been three African Popes; the most recent, Pope Gelasius I, died in 496 C.E. after serving for less than five years.

en.wikipedia.org

3.5k Upvotes

369 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Recent_Flounder6011 • 23h ago

TIL that in the first three decades of California being a state, Spanish was briefly an official language alongside English. When the 1879 Constitution of the state was ratified, that was no longer the case.

en.wikipedia.org

204 Upvotes

6 comments

r/todayilearned • u/autotelica • 1d ago

TIL Sonny and Cher were among the backing vocalists on the Ronette's 1963 song "Be My Baby"

en.wikipedia.org

786 Upvotes

38 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Sandstorm400 • 1d ago

TIL the federal department running Questacon, the National Science and Technology Centre, faced up to a $1.5m fine after a child's hands were allegedly set on fire by a plasma globe, following an investigation which revealed that a spark from the globe ignited the hand sanitizer the child had used.

theguardian.com

646 Upvotes

22 comments

r/todayilearned • u/BezugssystemCH1903 • 1d ago

TIL, euro starter kits are coin pouches issued before a nation adopts the currency. Retailers get business packs with around €100 in rolls, while the general public gets mini-kits to learn the coins.

en.wikipedia.org

2.0k Upvotes

113 comments

r/todayilearned • u/primal_cortex • 1d ago

TIL it is a misdemeanor in North Carolina to accuse someone of a crime on a gravestone. The law was passed in 1949 for Hamp Kendall, who was pardoned for a 1906 murder after the real killer confessed—but couldn't legally alter the victim's headstone, which still named him as the murderer.

atlasobscura.com

2.0k Upvotes

55 comments

r/todayilearned • u/Popular_Try_5075 • 1d ago

TIL IBM has had an American Football team in Japan since 1976 called "Big Blue" but their original name was "The Thinkers"

en.wikipedia.org

561 Upvotes

14 comments

r/todayilearned • u/signaldecoderr • 1d ago

TIL researchers discovered a 4,000-year-old human handprint on the underside of an ancient Egyptian clay model used in burials.

archaeology.org

389 Upvotes

19 comments

r/todayilearned • u/SigmaEpsilonChi • 1d ago

TIL that in 2005 a French pilot managed to land a specially-modified helicopter on the summit of Mt. Everest

en.wikipedia.org

2.4k Upvotes

130 comments

r/todayilearned • u/-AMARYANA- • 1d ago

TIL the early versions of both the screenplay and the soundtrack of 'The Jungle Book' (1967) followed Rudyard Kipling's work more closely, with a dramatic, dark, and sinister tone, which Disney did not want in his family film.

en.wikipedia.org

1.1k Upvotes

52 comments

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