› added 5 years ago

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TIL That after a two-year impasse with no new Pope, the Cardinals elected a hermit monk who sent them an angry letter, threatening them with divine judgement. He became Celestine V. He served for five months before implementing a law that allowed Popes to abdicate. He abdicated a week later.

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nejvb TIL that tongue twister 'she sells seashells by the seashore' is about a real girl named Mary Anning. She also happened to be one of the very first people to discover a massive dinosaur fossil, which she did at age 12 while looking for seashells to sell by the seashore.
BrPNe TIL Jack Parsons was one of the founders of NASA JPL and a pioneer of the American space program. He also practiced esoteric magic rituals, and was a devoted follower of British occultist Aleister Crowley, and his group, The Ordo Templis Orientis.
5YDDk TIL the first major labor strike in the US was organized by 102 women at a textile mill in Rhode Island.
wL4rY TIL while the Icelandic airline Loftleiðir was only allowed to operate flights to and from Iceland, they managed to circumvent the rule by having their USA-continental Europe flights covered by two tickets: one for flying to Iceland, and the other for flying from Iceland to the mainland.
pxAp TIL Tesla once paid an overdue hotel bill with a model of his “death beam”, warning hotel staff to never open it. After his death in 1943 the box was pried open and found to contain nothing but harmless old electrical components.