› added 10 years ago

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TIL that Crossing your fingers for luck is actually a Christian symbol for invoking protection by emulating the shape of a cross.

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N7wkE TIL during surgery on a 60-year-old woman, Italian doctors discovered one of the first heart prostheses - an artificial mitral valve - which was implanted almost 50 years ago when the patient was 10, by Christiaan Barnard, the surgeon who performed the world’s first human-to-human heart transplant
a86OM TIL that five structure that were either directly inspired by or modelled after the London, Crystal Palace were also destroyed by fire.
wLJoW TIL that an ocean quahog clam named Ming lived to 507 years old
oBLLA TIL that Lenny Bruce was discharged from the US Navy for pretending to be a cross-dresser. Lenny wished to quiet the Navy after serving for 3 years during WW2 and devised the said plan for getting honorably discharged.
wo0bJ TIL that from 1264 to 1827, anyone who received a Master of Arts degree from Oxford had to swear that they would never forgive Henry Symeonis. By 1608, no one knew who he was or what he had done