› added 9 years ago

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TIL around Halloween in 2012, Hurricane Sandy upended a giant oak tree in New Haven. In the roots of the tree were several skeletons from the 18th century and a forgotten 100-year-old time capsule.

ADBww TIL: In the 1800s, Mrs Favell Lee Mortimer set out to write an ambitious guide to all the nations on Earth. She had never set foot outside Shropshire. She was horribly misinformed about virtually every topic she turned her attention to. And she was prejudiced against foreigners.
QJeaL TIL the majority of mammal fossils are male. Some think because they more wide-ranging, reckless and foolhardy, e.g. in the case of mammoths, “they were more likely to do silly things, like die in tar pits.”
0bjL TIL Stanley Williams, co-founder and leader of the Crips, was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2001, after writing several children’s books urging kids ‘not to make the same mistakes he did’. He was executed in 2005 on charges of quadruple homicide.
X0BOD TIL that Vatican City has a national football team. It's not a member of FIFA and the squad consists entirely of employees of the Vatican, such as police officers, postal workers, government officials and members of the Swiss Guard
oRvB7 TIL Hollywood needed the support of the mob to make the film The Godfather. The Italian League insisted that if any mention of mafia or la cosa nostra was stricken from the script and proceeds donated from the movie’s premiere to the Italian League, they wouldn’t obstruct the filming.