› added 6 months ago

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TIL that Frank Abagnale, the real-life inspiration for Catch Me If You Can, fabricated most of his infamous conman exploits, and much of his story was a hoax.

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1YnV TIL the bad grammar and spelling errors found in scam emails & phishing attempts from Nigerian princes (etc) is done on purpose; spell checkers are intentionally not used: Research from Microsoft suggests that email scammers maximise profits by entrapping only the most gullible who overlook spelling
4kNbo TIL that Madame Tussaud's skill at making wax replicas of people is what saved her from the French Revolution's Guillotine.
j6Bav TIL of the Shakers, a christian sect that believed sexuality to be the root of all evil and original sin. All members went far enough in chastity to avoid shaking the opposite sex's hands. Their membership declined from a peak of 5000 in 1840 to 3 members in 2019 due to lack of births.
pEOG TIL: That James McCartney, Paul McCartney’s son, wanted to learn the guitar not because of his father but because he saw Marty McFly play one in Back to the Future.
xV6M5 TIL That there's a specific brand of mud that's been rubbed on every baseball ever pitched in the MLB since the 1950s