› added 3 years ago

367

TIL Nebraska passed a "Safe Haven Law" to ostensibly allow infants to be abandoned at certain locations without abandonment charges. However, it had no age cap, so people would abandon teenagers and older kids.

Read more cbc.ca

via reddit.com

JxeQ TIL that in 1981, a Turkish man shot Pope John Paul II four times but didn’t kill him. After the Pope recovered, he visited the assassin in prison forgave him. The assassin was pardoned at the Pope’s request and 33 years after his crime, he visited Vatican City and laid flowers on the Pope’s tomb.
8aV1X TIL that former North Korean leader Kim Jong-il secretly studied English on the small island of Malta in the 1970s . His English teacher, Prof. Daniel Massa, said that he used to become irritable when hungry, especially when lessons overstepped their time limit and impinged on his lunch break.
1avG4 TIL a Norway TV channel planned to show a reindeer migration nonstop in real time for 168 hours, using drones, antler-cams and snowmobiles. Previous "slow TV" included nonstop knitting, 18 hours of live salmon fishing, and hours of "firewood chopping" discussion followed by live footage of a fire.
Zpxpv TIL ancient graffiti found in Pompeii calls into dispute the date Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD. A millennia would pass before archeologist’s would discover a workers charcoal inscription dated 17 October 79 AD. 2 months after the infamous city was allegedly buried under 20 feet of ash and pumice stone.
8ekdG TIL that when Henry Maxim invented the automatic machine-gun, he went deaf from test-firing it so much.. this affected his son enough that as an adult he added his own invention to the family legacy: the silencer.