› added 1 year ago

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TIL about the British post office scandal. Between 1999 and 2015 over 900 subpostmasters where prosecuted for theft and false accounting, when really it was a problem with their accounting software.

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9Yr1m TIL about neutral Moresnet, an formerly independent village-nation between Germany and Belgium that continued to exist until 1920. At it's height, it housed 3500 citizens and the largest zinc-mine of Europe. The flag colors came from a mining company and it's citizens were considered stateless
N7e6e TIL Socrates condemned the use of the written word because he thought it would cause people to be forgetful.
nXvG TIL that there was a hobbyist photographer who took tens of thousands of pictures in the 50s, mostly in Chicago. She never showed them to anyone or even bothered to develop them and she remained unknown until her death. Now she is considered one of the most important street photographers ever.
Z0Ba TIL there is a bone fragment displayed on a museum of Chinon that was once reputed to belong to Joan of Arc. An 2008 study showed that the bone actually came from an Egyptian mummy
94LD TIL during the Great Potato Famine, the Ottoman Empire tried to send money and ships full of food to Ireland, but were blocked by the British and instead snuck into Dublin illegally to provide aid for the Irish.