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TIL In the 1800s, feeding lobster to prisoners was considered “cruel and unusual punishment, like making people eat rats”.

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4MDw TIL a man named James Harrison pledged to donate blood once he turned 18 after needing 13 liters of blood during a major chest surgery at 13. It was discovered that his blood contained a rare antigen which cured Rhesus disease. He has donated blood more than 1,000 times, saving over 2,000,000 lives.
W7MM8 TIL about panbabylonism, the belief that all religions of civilization is ultimately derived from babylonian myths including the genesis creation narrative and the genesis flood narrative.
ANZAl TIL about the "Sator Square". It contains a 5-word Latin palindrome, any which way you go. Or, it would, except the word “AREPO”, which appears nowhere else in Latin literature. Unlike the other words, it's definition is arguably lost to history.
Yd4P TIL all the historical information on Atlantis comes from one source: Plato, who probably invented the whole thing to show Athens was better than even this fabled civilization.
LQLYZ TIL a 2022 California Supreme Court decision allowed bumble bees to be considered a protected species because they met the state’s legal definition of a “fish”.