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TIL Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, “admitted to defrauding citizens by organizing mad gold-digging expeditions and also to claiming to possess dark or ‘necromantic’ power” 4 years before discovering “The Book of Mormon”

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awwEN TIL in 1954, the Peanuts character "Pig-Pen" made his debut in a strip directly parodying Piggy from Lord of the Flies. He declares, "I haven't got a name ... people just call me things ... real insulting things".
XEPnX TIL After Czech gymnast Věra Čáslavská lost her training facility due to the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia, she trained for the 1968 Olympics in the forest using potato sacks as weights and logs as beams. She medaled in all six events, four of them Gold.
jNEEv TIL some trucks in North Korea are powered by burning charcoal because the price of oil is too high for most citizens.
awRRZ TIL that Zambia had its own space program in 1964, whose mission statement included sending "Afronauts": a crew consisting of a 17 year old space girl, a cat, and a priest to Mars. The priest was specifically instructed not to enforce Christianity of the Martians if they didn't want it.
VBLep TIL That Postboxes in the UK have the sigel of the monarch that was on the throne during it's time of creation/repair. Some go back to Queen Victoria! My road's postbox was from Edward VII's reign (1901 - 1910).