r/todayilearned is a subreddit with 41.5M members. The most common kinds of discussions are news and pain & anger, and the community frequently discusses til, looking, found, lookingfor, and history.
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Submit interesting and specific facts about something that you just found out here.
Popular Themes in r/todayilearned
#1
News
: "TIL about Sarah Boone, who was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison after she locked her boyfriend, Jorge Torres Jr. in a suitcase and left him to suffocate."
22 posts
#2
Pain & Anger
: "TIL since the age of five, 77 year old Martha Lillard is the only remaining patient to still live in an iron lung"
4 posts
#3
Advice Requests
: "TIL that newborns can distinguish the sounds of every language on Earth, about 600 consonants and 200 vowels, but by their first birthday, their brain has already filtered out sounds not used in their native language, making foreign accents almost inevitable for adult learners."
2 posts
Popular Topics in r/todayilearned
#1
Til
: "Til that in the late 1960s, the Beatles wanted to make the first live-action film adaptation of “The Lord of the Rings,” seeking Stanley Kubrick to direct with plans to feature their music. However, Stanley Kubrick called it unfilmable; J.R.R. Tolkien hated the band and thus refused the rights."
500 posts
#2
Looking
39 posts
#3
Found
39 posts
#4
Lookingfor
39 posts
#5
History
: "TIL Certain libraries across Europe house archive collections dating back to the Renaissance that are still uncatalogued due to the volume of material. Unknown documents by some of History's famous most authors is still up for discovery: A batch of notes written by Machiavelli was found in 2020"
23 posts
#6
Struggling
22 posts
#7
Today
17 posts
#8
Worst
15 posts
#9
Hard
12 posts
#10
Hate
11 posts
Flair Used in r/todayilearned
#1
Frequent/Recent Repost: Removed
: "TIL the tiny white dots you see in the blue sky are your white blood cells moving through the small blood vessels in front of your retina."
15 posts
#2
(R.6d) Too General
: "TIL about Sarah Boone, who was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison after she locked her boyfriend, Jorge Torres Jr. in a suitcase and left him to suffocate."
6 posts
#3
(R.1) Not verifiable
: "TIL Vasily Blokhin, Chief Executioner of Stalin’s NKVD for 20 years, personally killed around 25,000 people, likely the highest kill count of any single person ever."
5 posts
#4
(R.1) Tenuous evidence
: "TIL a man attempting to establish a world record by crying for 100 hours straight had to stop 6 hours into his attempt because he began to experience several symptoms including headaches, puffed eyes, a generally swollen face, and partial blindness that reportedly lasted about 45 minutes."
4 posts
#5
(R.1) Invalid src
: "Today I learned that Nintendo briefly considered giving pikachu large breasts to appeal to western audiences."
3 posts
#6
(R.1) Not supported
: "TIL Stalin was arrested several times in the years after he led a bank robbery killing 40 guards and bystanders, but he escaped exile each time."
3 posts
#7
(R.3) Recent source
: "TIL that casinos rarely use surveillance cameras to catch card counters. Instead, dealers and floor supervisors look for behavioral "red flags," such as a player suddenly multiplying their bet size by 1-12x right after a losing hand."
3 posts
#8
Word Origin/Translation/Definition, removed
: "TIL that the term “slush fund” was originally a nautical term for cash that a ship's crew raised by selling fat (slush) scraped from cooking pots to tallow makers. This cash was kept separate from the ship's accounts and used to make small purchases for the crew."
3 posts
#9
(R.1) Inaccurate
: "TIL about Maria Hertogh, a Dutch girl who was separated from her family in Dutch East Indies during the Japanese occupation. When teen Maria was tracked down years later, she had forgotten Dutch and considered herself a Malay Muslim. She was forcibly returned to her birth parents against her will."
2 posts
#10
(R.5) Omits Essential Info
: "TIL that no matter how fast or slow a language is spoken, every human language transmits information at approximately 39 bits per second. Fast languages like Japanese pack less meaning per syllable, slow languages like Mandarin pack more, the brain has a hard speed limit."
2 posts
Member Growth in r/todayilearned
Yearly
+642k members(1.6%)
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Last updated: June 1, 2026