› added 7 years ago

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TIL about the American town 'Merrymount', founded 1624. Named from slang at the time for 'illicit' forms of sex - the town rejected Puritan values welcoming non-Heterosexuals, freeing indentured servants and intermarrying Native Americans. Five years later it was invaded and razed to the ground.

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via reddit.com

OGn6e TIL the manikin flying around the moon right now is named after Arturo Campos, the NASA engineer responsible for the plan to provide the Apollo 13 command module with enough power to get home safely, which was represented by Gary Sinise in the Apollo 13 film.
a400 TIL Ambercrombie burns its unsold clothes. They don’t donate them because it is a bad image for the company to have poor people wear them.
OGorX TIL Union General Philip Kearny devised the first unit insignia patches used in the U.S. Army in 1862, after mistakenly giving orders to soldiers not under his command. Afterward, his men wore a patch of red cloth to identify themselves as members of his unit. Other units quickly adopted the idea.
J1Jrj TIL about Eternal September: How a 1993 AOL promotion led to year-round influxes of new users, a phenomenon that previously only occurred each September with new computer science students.
gNpL TIL the last person in the United States to be executed by hanging was convicted murderer Billy Bailey, who faced his death 20 years ago in 1996. When given the choice of lethal injection, he declined in favor of a noose, declaring it the more “barbaric” choice.