› added 5 years ago

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TIL that Salvador Dali made a painting for prisoners at Rikers Island which hung in the prisoner dining room for 15 years, but when it was moved to the prison lobby for "safekeeping" two prison guards and two wardens stole the painting (replacing it with their own crudely drawn and mismatched fake)

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X0VW6 TIL Jan Joosten van Lodensteijn, also known as Yayōsu, was a Dutch navigator who became one of the first known Western samurai and the only Dutch samurai in history. He was an advisor and interpreter to the shōgun Tokugawa Ieyasu, and there is an area in Tokyo named after him.
dDwer TIL of "The Twinkie Defense" in the trial of Dan White, who shot Harvey Milk.The Defense claimed that White had suffered "diminished capacity" as a result of depression, a symptom from a change in diet to junk food. White was convicted of "Voluntary Manslaughter" rather than "First-Degree Murder"
OWYe TIL in 1998, an entire North Korean submarine and her crew was lost to a single South Korean fishing net
lox6G TIL the 1992 Super Bowl halftime show was so bad that a huge number of viewers switched to FOX's In Living Color and never switched back. This led to the NFL booking bigger and better talent for the halfime show, starting with Michael Jackson.
epymD TIL that a con man defrauded Al Capone. He persuaded Capone to invest $50,000 in a scheme. After two months, he returned the funds. He informed Capone that the scheme had failed and that he had no funds to support himself. Capone, impressed by his candor, provided him with $5,000 to "tide him over."