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TIL that a judge told a convicted serial killer; "You will be strangled to death in front of the parents whose children you killed, Your body will then be cut into 100 pieces and put in acid, the same way you killed the children." The killer died before that happened.

OGDYg TIL in 1999, a grass roots email campaign was able to get the 1988 song "Hangin' Tough" by New Kids On The Block onto MTV's "Total Request Live" show by encouraging people to vote for it. It landed at number 2 on the countdown.
0d4kj TIL a clear fishing wire is attached to posts surrounding the entire perimeter of Manhattan. From 1st Street to 126th. This string is part of an Eruv, a Jewish symbolic enclosure. Many observant Jews in Manhattan rely on this string to leave the house on the Sabbath.
oR5Jr TIL about hindsight bias—the tendency to believe, after an event, that we could have predicted its outcome with certainty. It also leads people to judge historical figures based on prevailing contemporary opinions.
nWmGY TIL while trying to perform a magic trick to amuse his children, Isambard Kingdom Brunel (generally cited as one of the most important engineers ever) inhaled a coin which stuck in his windpipe. After a machine Brunel devised failed, his father proposed turning him upside-down, dislodging the coin.
1aVJD TIL International Women's Day was founded by the Socialist Party of America and later became a national holiday in Soviet Russia. It was predominantly a Communist holiday until adopted by the UN in 1975.