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TIL an eerie prophecy attributed to Nostradamus regarding the 9/11 attacks was in fact fabricated by a college student in 1997 to show how easily such prophecies can be misused.

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via reddit.com

m5Qy TIL of Karl von Müller, Captain of the German WWI vessel the SMS Emden, who would allow the passengers of the enemy merchant ships time to gather their belongings and abandon the ship before sinking it.
nemoY TIL of a cat that served on the Royal Navy sloop HMS Amethyst. The cat received the PDSA's Dicking Medal after surviving injuries from a cannon shell, raising morale, and killing off a rat infestation.
mLKy TIL: The Soup Nazi is real. Weeks after the episode aired, Seinfeld and the production team went to Soup Kitchen International for lunch, where they were berated by Ali Yeganeh (the soup nazi) for “ruining” his business. He then bellowed, “No soup for you!” and ejected them from the restaurant.
VBpv4 TIL that local time changes of as little as 2 minutes between cities was common before the adoption of standardized time zones, so railroad companies set up "comparative time zone" tables using Washington DC at noon as a benchmark for train scheduling.
v1M6B TIL of William Burke, a Scottish murderer who would sell corpses for a profit to medical researchers. After he was hanged for his crimes, scientists dissected him, wrote with his blood, and bound a book with his skin.