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TIL between the 16th and 18th centuries, the Catholic church exhumed skeletons from catacombs and decorated them with gold and precious stones to serve as relics for saints. While some of the corpses may have been early martyrs, most actually did not belong to anybody with religious significance.

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LLG9 TIL that in 1964, a man placed himself in a box and had himself air-freighted from London to Australia because he couldn’t afford the airfare. He nearly died of dehydration.
R7VNa TIL of Ellen and William Craft, who escaped slavery by travelling openly from Macon, Georgia to Boston. Ellen, who was light skinned, dressed as a man with a sling to hide the fact that she could not write and passed as William's slave owner. Eventually, they fled to Liverpool, England.
O1ke TIL in order for the OD scene in Pulp Fiction to seem as real as possible, Quentin Tarantino filmed John Travolta removing the needle as fast as he could. Then in editing they reversed the footage so it looked as if Travolta was slamming the needle into Uma Thurman’s chest.
WjXd TIL that in the 2000 census, 89.9% of Americans with the surname “Washington” were black.
E1gnX TIL William Kamkwamba, after being forced to quit school at 14 due to poverty, taught himself to build windmills out of trash, using books from a local library, transformed his village with electricity and became an international celebrity. Receiving a scholarship to Dartmouth and graduating in 2014