› added 11 years ago

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TIL Richard McNair escaped 3 times from 3 different prisons. Hours after his third escape this time by mailing himself out in a crate, he was stopped by police. He managed to convince them he was out jogging and in town to help on a post-Katrina roofing project. (Video in comments)

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4DBa TIL that a danish garbage collector works 21 hours a week and make $80,000 a year.
5Vr9 TIL of an American soldier who put up such a fight in captivity so well the Viet Cong executed him out of frustration. He was last heard singing “God Bless America”. He was later awarded the Medal of Honor
6956Y TIL that Finland, the country of thousands of lakes, does not have that much water. The average depth of its lakes is only 7 meters, meaning that all the lake water in Finland combined is less than a fourth of the contents of Ladoga. However, to be fair, Ladoga is the largest lake in Europe.
m1NAE TIL North Korea is obsessed with Choco Pies from S Korea. There's a black market for them, and factories once used them to pay worker bonuses. In 2014, S Korean activists sent 10K pies to NK with helium balloons. After an injured NK defector crossed the DMZ in 2017, he was given a lifetime supply.
J1XQ4 TIL that the idea that medieval castles had clockwise spiral staircases to make it hard for attackers is mostly unfounded. Not only did about 30% of medieval castles have counter-clockwise stairs, the earliest known reference for this claim comes from a book written in 1903, with no primary sources