› added 5 years ago

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TIL after the Pope banned joining the Freemasons in 1738, a group of Catholics started their own secret society named 'The Order of the Pug' in which initiation involved wearing a collar, walking on all fours, pawing at the door to be let in, getting barked at and kissing a pug statue's butt.

A6ma TIL German interrogator Hanns Scharff was against using physical torture on POWs. He would instead take them out to lunch, on nature walks and to swimming pools, where they would reveal information on their own. After the war he moved to the US and became a mosaic artist.
mpbo TIL that there is no reason to expect a supervolcanic eruption at Yellowstone in the near future. Such events are ‘neither regular nor predictable’.
LkKLQ TIL that “Budweiser” was originally the German name for beer brewed in the Czech town of České Budějovice (German: Budweis). Anheuser-Busch stole the name for its American brew, and the breweries have been in trademark battles ever since. If you order a Budweiser in the EU, you get the Czech brew.
MepdV TIL of George Trepal of Polk County Florida. A recluse & an oddball, he poisoned his neighbors, killing the mother, by tampering bottles of Coke with thallium in 1988. He was irritated by loud music & noises by the teenage sons, the reason for doing the poisoning. He is awaiting the death row.
695DQ TIL The original artwork for the Rolling Stones song 'Paint it Black' had a comma inserted by a typographical error that gave it a very different interpretation in the 1960s.