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TIL that when the pope used to be elected, he would sit in a chair with a hole cut into it with his balls dangling from it. A young cardinal would then fondle them and declare “He has two balls, and they are well hung.” This was to ensure the pope was not a woman in disguise

w5V1 TIL Dr. Martin A. Couney saved thousands of infants by an unorthodox method of putting incubators of prematurely born babies on display. While technically being a carnival show on Coney Island, the treatment of babies was ethically sound and paid for itself. He made the incubator what it is today.
ANdxa TIL Puyi, the last Emperor of China, made a rare visit in June 1942 to confer with the graduating class at the Manchukuo Military Academy, awarding the top student "Takagi Masao" with a gold watch. Masao's real name was Park Chung Hee, who would later go on to be military dictator of South Korea.
W7GEA TIL about the Murchison Murders (1929-30). An escaped convict (allegedly) killed 3 people and disposed of the remains using a method divulged to him by a novelist who was struggling to develop the plot of his story because the technique would not leave enough clues for the main character to follow.
vPDyr TIL in December 2020, GoDaddy tricked employees into thinking they had earned a bonus of $650. Employees were then told they had failed a phishing test and were required to do social engineering training. After media criticism, the company apologized to its staff, but did not offer actual bonuses.
ANKva TIL in 1998, the FBI sought to extract DNA from the cigarette butts smoked in 1971 by the unidentified airline hijacker known only as D.B. Cooper, but discovered the butts had been destroyed while in the custody of the Las Vegas field office.