› added 5 years ago

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TIL in Spain, a thief found child pornography on some tapes he had stolen from a 64-year-old football coach, among other electrical goods. He left the incriminating tapes in an envelope for the police to find, notifying them of where he had burgled them from, leading to the coach being arrested.

0wBjy TIL that a tree in Glastonbury, England, is said to flower on Christmas day—and people were disappointed that it did not obey the switch to the Gregorian calendar in 1752.
dbyd TIL the Voyager 1 spacecraft, currently more than 20 billion km from earth, is powered by a radioisotope with a half-life of 87.7 years. It has been slowly shutting down systems since 2007 to conserve energy, and by 2025 will go completely dark as it loses the ability to power a single instrument.
E1810 TIL In 2004, a Disney employee who played Tigger was acquitted of charges of allegedly fondling a 13-year-old girl in costume, when his defence attorney tried on the costume in court and demonstrated how hard it was to move the costumes oversized glove hands.
jNkBN TIL about the Christmas pickle. A supposedly German tradition, where you hide a pickle in the Christmas tree and whoever finds it first gets a reward. Apparently this is a well known tradition in the US, but not of German origin and in fact completely unknown in Germany.
4XeXJ TIL that in Finland there are "open prisons" where you can work for $8 an hour, own cell phones, can do your own grocery shopping and get three days of vacation every couple of months while serving your sentence