› added 4 years ago

48

TIL about Albert Pierrepoint, an English hangman who executed between 435 and 600 people in a 25-year career that ended in 1956. During his tenure he hanged over 200 people convicted of war crimes in Germany and Austria, as well as some high-profile murderers.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

Qdek TIL: When Catherine di Medici was queen of France, she kept a ‘Flying Squad’ of 80 women tasked with sleeping with powerful men to extract their secrets.
Lk0Rm TIL no movies featuring an exploding helicopter has ever won a Best Picture Academy Award
Eg8ZX TIL the "OMG" cosmic ray was (probably) a proton travelling at 99.99999999999999999999951% of the speed of light. It would take 215,000 years for a photon to gain a 1 centimeter lead on this proton.
Bg6Qk TIL in 1980, Kevin Peter Hall starred in the movie Without Warning, where he plays an alien that comes to Earth to hunt humans for sport. Seven years later, Hall would also play the Predator.
XEEOr TIL that Stalin tried to have John Wayne killed because he didn't like socialism.