Today I Learned (TIL)

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/stiucsirt on 2025-08-08 23:52:24+00:00.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/gimmesuandchocolate on 2025-08-08 23:52:21+00:00.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/mucubed on 2025-08-08 23:43:34+00:00.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/Quad_C-137 on 2025-08-08 22:30:51+00:00.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/SaberLover1000 on 2025-08-08 21:32:08+00:00.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/LookAtThatBacon on 2025-08-08 21:26:53+00:00.

Original Title: TIL two weeks after being appointed CEO of Olympus, Michael Christopher Woodford blew the whistle on Olympus after he was fired for repeatedly questioning suspicious transactions and involving external auditors, exposing one of the biggest "loss-hiding arrangements in Japanese corporate history".

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/senator_amygdala on 2025-08-08 21:18:19+00:00.

Original Title: TIL that Pocahontas's real name was Matoax. Her tribe carefully concealed from the English her real name, changing it to Pocahontas, "out of a superstitious fear, lest they, by the knowledge of her true name, should be enabled to do her some hurt"

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/nebmij1 on 2025-08-08 18:45:21+00:00.

Original Title: TIL that a common complaint among test audiences for Good Night and Good Luck was that the actor playing Joseph McCarthy was too over the top, not realizing the film used actual archival footage of McCarthy himself

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/psychosisnaut on 2025-08-08 17:53:31+00:00.

Original Title: TIL "Bushido, the Soul of Japan" by Inazo Nitobé, generally considered the modern incarnation of the Samurai Bushido code, was largely written in Malvern, Pennsylvania and published in Philadelphia in 1899

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/Physical_Hamster_118 on 2025-08-08 17:45:37+00:00.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/tyrion2024 on 2025-08-08 17:16:20+00:00.

Original Title: TIL in 2012 every household in the Spanish town, Sodeto (250 people in 70 households), except one collectively entered the lottery El Gordo & ended up winning $130K each. The only person not included was Costis Mitsotakis cause the local association who sold tickets door-to-door forgot to go to his.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/Rhino-Kid22 on 2025-08-08 17:13:04+00:00.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/tyrion2024 on 2025-08-08 15:40:15+00:00.

Original Title: TIL when Kelly Clarkson played "Because of You" (which she wrote) for Clive Davis to consider for her album, he said it was a shitty song because it didn't rhyme. He then played her a song he felt should be included "Behind These Hazel Eyes" but got confused when he realized she had written that too

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/Flubadubadubadub on 2025-08-08 15:37:07+00:00.

Original Title: TIL In 2009 the term 'Ghost City' was coined to describe the large number of cities that had been built in China, but were largely unoccupied. However, it was Chinese policy to move the population from a predominantly rural base (82% in 1978) to urban (64% by 2020), the urban target is 75% by 2035.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/bostonstrong781 on 2025-08-08 14:55:23+00:00.

Original Title: TIL that a pioneer of the idea "8 hours labor, 8 hours recreation, 8 hours rest" was a wealthy 19th century businessman who tested out the idea in his own factory and in a town he founded as part of his embrace of socialism and radically equal society

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/backrowejoe on 2025-08-08 13:25:48+00:00.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/Morella1989 on 2025-08-08 13:13:24+00:00.

Original Title: TIL Mother Carey is a figure in 18th- and 19th-century English sailor folklore, seen as a harbinger of storms and linked to Davy Jones. The name comes from Latin Mater cara, meaning “Precious Mother.” Sailors called storm petrels “Mother Carey’s chickens,” believing them to be souls of dead seamen.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/Morella1989 on 2025-08-08 11:33:23+00:00.

Original Title: TIL that The Blackguard Children, also called the Blackguard Youth, were gangs of mostly homeless orphans and runaways in 17th- and 18th-century London’s poorest neighborhoods, who survived by begging and stealing. They were depicted in Daniel Defoe’s Colonel Jack and Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/likespb on 2025-08-08 11:33:17+00:00.

Original Title: Til operation cat drop was an attempt to reintroduce cats after the population was devastated by mosquito spray and the vermin population exploded devastating crops in villages in Borneo (repost after removal for wrong url)

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/No_Conversation_9325 on 2025-08-08 09:17:36+00:00.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/beerbellybegone on 2025-08-08 08:18:59+00:00.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/randy88moss on 2025-08-08 06:46:20+00:00.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/rampantradius on 2025-08-08 06:29:13+00:00.

Original Title: TIL that in 1961, Fidel Castro closed Cuban schools for a year and sent students from 6th grade and up, along with teachers, across the country to help others Cubans learn to read and write and It was successful. In just 8 months, Cuba's illiteracy rate dropped from around 23% to 3.9%.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/SuperMcG on 2025-08-08 05:19:50+00:00.

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The original was posted on /r/todayilearned by /u/Morella1989 on 2025-08-08 04:17:23+00:00.

Original Title: TIL about Oseola McCarty, a washerwoman from Hattiesburg, MS, who became one of the University of Southern Mississippi’s most celebrated benefactors. In 1995, she arranged for $150,000 of her savings to fund scholarships for students in financial need, a surprising amount given her modest earnings.