› added 9 years ago

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TIL that the term “scot-free” was actually absorbed into English from the Norse word “skattefri”, which means “without tax”.

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via reddit.com

QJGQe TIL of André Stander, a South African police officer who robbed almost 30 banks. Sometimes he’d carry out a crime during his lunch break and then return to the scene as an investigating officer. He was caught but escaped, formed a gang and robbed more banks. He was eventually killed in Florida.
7rdQp TIL that when a German noble wanted to marry one of his wife's ladies-in-waiting, he received the approval of Martin Luther to marry her secretly, because divorce is worse than bigamy. After the scandal became public, Luther told him to "tell a good, strong lie" and deny the marriage completely
QJM8L TIL the accent that most actors had in films from the 30's and 40's (i.e. Jimmy Stewart from It's a Wonderful Life) was known as "Transatlantic" and nobody ever actually spoke that way.
XlR8 TIL: That Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, who died at the age of 101 in 2002, had an older sister, Violet, who sadly died at the age of eleven, eight years before the Queen Mother’s own birth. Which means that one sister died in the 19th century while the other died in the 21st century.
kJYw1 TIL that Papin invented the pressure cooker in 1679 for extracting gelatine from bones and reducing the time needed to cook food.