› added 9 years ago

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TIL Dr Jack Kevorkian was imprisoned for 8 years after performing voluntary euthanasia on patients. His tombstone reads “He sacrificed himself for everyone’s rights.”

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e0mmb TIL that the practice of playing music for callers on hold began with a faulty phone line connection. A loose wire touching the steel frame of an office building caused it to act as a giant radio receiver, allowing callers to hear music from local radio stations while they waited on hold.
4XdG6 TIL of Ruth Coker Burks aka the "Cemetery Angel" who at the height of the AIDS crisis put up her own money to take care of and buy medicine for AIDS patients and buried over 40 people in her family's cemetery plot, most of whom were gay men whose families would not claim their ashes.
Wk58d TIL of Ghulam Dastagir, a Stationmaster who refused to leave his post during the Bhopal Gas Tragedy, & prevented any trains from stopping at the station, saving thousands of lives even as his colleagues were dead and he himself spent 2 decades in and out of hospital due to long exposure to the Gas
6EBnY TIL That in 1995, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated for attempting peace with Palestine.
ZBwG TIL Animal Planet made a fake documentary about the existence of mermaids… twice!