› added 4 years ago

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TIL about the weirdest ever state in Europe, Neutral Moresnet. It was a condominium between Belgium and Germany for 100 years, was 900 acres large, formed a quadripoint border, had Esperanto as an official language, and only existed because of Zinc and Brass Mine.

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via reddit.com

oBy8A TIL that Stockbridge Police Chief William J. Obanhein, who in 1964 posed for Norman Rockwell famous Ruby Bridges painting "The Problem We All Live With", was surprisingly also the “Officer Obie” of Arlo Guthrie’s 1967 hit song “Alice’s Restaurant.”
OJOY TIL American soldiers would wrap suicide attackers from the Moro Muslim group in the Philippines in pig skin to make them unfit to go to heaven and deter potential future attacks by them
p8No8 TIL that one of the Queen's corgis once mated with her sister's dachshund, creating the "Dorgi".
PDAG TIL the United States sterilized over 60,000 people from 1907 to 1974 for being feeble-minded or an imbecile
YpEOd TIL in 2018, Jack Johnson, the first black world heavyweight boxing champion, was posthumously issued a pardon by President Trump, 105 years after his conviction in 1913, under the Mann Act, in which he crossed state lines with his wife Lucille, a white woman