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TIL that the city of Basel, Switzerland has many statues and fountains of basilisks. In 1474, the city put a rooster on trial and sentenced it to death, fearing that it had laid an egg which would hatch a basilisk.

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via reddit.com

4X7P5 TIL about "Le Grand K", a hunk of platinum kept in a vault in a Paris, that until recently was the international prototype for a kilogram of weight. A kilogram's weight is now defined based on the laws of the universe so as to avoid a physical object that decays over time.
nDnW TIL that when faced against 120 war elephants, Timur the Lame stuffed his camel’s satchels with wood/hay, lit them on fire and prodded them forward. The sight of flaming camels charging at them caused the elephants to turn around and stampede their own lines.
ADoZg TIL Nicolas Cage once donated $2 million to Amnesty International for them to use to offer rehabilitation shelters, medical services and psychological and reintegration services to some of the 300,000 children forced to fight in conflicts across the world.
Zp7GD TIL That pillows were started around 7000 BC in Mesopotamia, modern-day Iraq. You slept on a stone to keep insects from crawling into the holes in your head. This meant they were not originally made for comfort.
BgBjD TIL John Hinckley Jr., Reagan's attempted assassin, came from a wealthy conservative Dallas family who were major Bush donors; he was raised in the affluent Park Cities neighborhood that "gave Reagan the highest majority" of the vote; and he belonged to the American Nazi Party