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TIL there was man sentenced to death by a firing squad, he was shot 9 times and a 10th point blank in the face to ensure death. He somehow didnt die, laid still for hours pretending to be dead and when the squad left, he escaped.

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XE7oE TIL that the mayor of Chicago in 1981 moved into the most notorious public housing complex in the country as a political stunt. She lasted three weeks.
wLd6o TIL about “concussionist" R.G. Dyrenforth, hired by the U.S. government in 1891 to make it rain over Texas by blasting water from the skies with explosives. Despite being "certain that rain can be caused by explosion in mid-air," he just managed to catch all manner of things on fire with his kites.
yVx8 TIL That the all of the water in Great Basin, which covers a large portion of the western US, never flows out.
loVeG TIL the Baghdad Pact was a NATO type alliance between the UK, Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Pakistan until 1979
eplBE TIL about Abu bakr al-razi. A Persian physician, philosopher and alchemist who was among the first to use humoral theory to distinguish one contagious disease from another, and wrote a pioneering book about smallpox and measles providing clinical characterization of the diseases.