› added 3 months ago

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TIL Martin Sommer, a convicted concentration camp guard who (allegedly) had two priests crucified, became a double amputee in military service and was released from his life sentence in prison in 1971 because no prison was equipped to continue treating his war-related injuries.

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BrAxL TIL that during the Western Schism of the Catholic Church, there was a cardinal appointed by Antipope Benedict XIII who split with the others and, acting as the entire college of cardinals, elected someone Pope all by himself; when that guy died, he elected himself Pope all by himself.
VBNe0 TIL of Seal Finger - inflammation from touching unprocessed seal products or seal bites. It's transmission is unknown.
MeE50 TIL those giant cylinder towers at nuclear power plants are for cooling water.
P5KZ TIL there’s a 19 year old who has a plan to clean up half of the pacific garbage patch in 10 years - it would remove over 77,000 tons of plastic from the ocean
7rbjx TIL that the world's oldest prosthetic device, an artificial wooden toe was found on a 3,000-year-old mummy of an Egyptian woman in 1997. Now, researchers from the University of Basel in Switzerland have learned a great deal about how the toe functioned, what it's made of, and how it was fabricated.