› added 7 years ago

70

TIL prior to the Treason Act of 1790, the punishment for a woman convicted of treason was to be burned at the stake. To show mercy, the executioner was equipped with a cord passed around the victim’s throat, which he would then pull tight, strangling her before the flames could reach her.

Read more wikipedia.org

via ift.tt

mw0R TIL when a Virginia school board tried to ban “To Kill a Mockingbird” as immoral, author Harper Lee wrote a letter asking if the board members were literate and donated money to enroll them in the first grade.
X0Z96 TIL That The Cillian in Cillian Murphy Is Pronounced Like The Beer, Killian
VB6AB TIL that the first film ever to have special effects was a depiction of Mary Queen of Scots' execution
R50Z1 TIL that English speakers proposed abbreviating Coordinated Universal Time as CUT. French speakers proposed abbreviating it as TUC (for "temps universel coordonné"). Neither side got what they wanted, as the official abbreviation is "UTC".
QJgXe TIL Jeff Bezos made $6.24 billion in 5 minutes on October 10, 2017.