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TIL in 1817 an English man named Abraham Thornton successfully avoided a murder charge by demanding "trial by battle." It turned out that the practice was still technically allowed under the law despite having not been used for hundreds of years. Parliament finally abolished it one year later.

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v0eD TIL At age 16, John Smith of Pocahontas fame was a pirate, sold into slavery in Turkey, had a love affair with his Turkish mistress, killed her husband and three others in a single duel, escaped to Russia, and accidentally blew his genitals off.
BYrW TIL Orson Wells’s office was secretly bugged. Orson acknowledged the room was bugged and would greet the room upon arrival and farewell upon leaving as if he was on a radio show. “This is Orson Wells signing off.”
gebD TIL Warren Buffett met his mistress Astrid Menks, while she was a waitress at a nightclub his wife was a singer at. The women ‘shared’ Buffett from the 1970’s until his wife died in 2004. The three would send out Christmas cards signed “Warren, Susie and Astrid.” In 2006 Buffett married his mistress
M7MKm TIL certain moths have developed sound absorbing wings that make it harder for bats to hunt and eat them with their echolocation. The structure of the moth wings might someday help people soundproof places
GAAj5 TIL that an estimated 13-19% of all Sequoias more than 4ft in diameter were destroyed in wildfires since the 2020 fire season