› added 3 years ago

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TIL that in 19th century England, if your corpse wasn’t claimed in a hospital or if you died in a place where you couldn’t be identified, you might have been sold to a school or hospital so doctors could practice anatomy. Some priests even sold bodies to gravediggers who sold them to hospitals.

VBrm0 TIL Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, the 11th Panchen Lama (the one responsible for choosing the next Dalai Lama), was abducted in 1995 by the Chinese government when he was only 6 years old. He has not been seen or heard from since.
O7ee TIL that in 1779, Thomas Jefferson submitted an anti-sodomy law to Virginia that would castrate men caught having gay sex. This law didn’t pass, and the state kept their anti-sodomy law in which death was the maximum penalty.
gr0v4 TIL that various animals have been awarded degrees, exposing the fraudulent activities of “degree mills.” One instance includes a cat that received an MBA and had a 3.5 GPA.
X0D7k TIL that after Zaire's 9-0 defeat to Yugoslavia in the 1974 World Cup, Zaire's military dictator, President Mobutu threatened the team that if they lost 4-0 to Brazil, in their next match, they wouldn't be allowed to return home.
Meg8a TIL that there is a theory that Cinderella's unique glass slipper was not a case of confusion between the French words vair (fur) and verre (glass), but actually a deliberate innuendo, since the prince had the right to "try on the fur slipper of all the maidens in the kingdom". (Droit de seigneur)