› added 8 years ago

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TIL a Soviet soccer player was so popular that when he was sent to the Siberian gulags during Stalin’s Great Purge in the 1930s, he was treated rather well as the gulag commanders were also his fans, who gave him better quarters and food rations, and was even asked to coach the local teams.

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WDnd TIL that whenever al-Qaeda organised games of volleyball, Mohammed Atef and Osama Bin Laden were forced to be on separate teams since they were both tall, and skilled players.
yVrKl TIL Giuseppe Ferlini, an Italian soldier turned treasure hunter, robbed and desecrated the pyramids of Meroë. Overall, he was responsible for the destruction of over 40 pyramids, some using explosives.
8an7a TIL -40° is the only unit in temperature where both Celsius and Fahrenheit converge.
wLYjJ TIL of Jeremiah Hamilton, 19th Century New York's notorious African-American, Wall Street millionaire. Blacklisted by the city's insurance firms and Public Stock Exchange, he went on to amass a fortune of $250 million in today's money and was known as the biggest single rival to the Vanderbilts.
gM1aA TIL of Big Sister, a brothel in Prague where clients could have sex for free after they signed a contract agreeing to be filmed. All rooms in the Big Sister house were equipped with web cams and the ‘action’ streams live via the Internet.