› added 10 years ago

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TIL Pope Francis is the first Jesuit Pope, the first Pope from the America’s, the first Pope from the Southern Hemisphere, and the first Non-European Pope in 1,272 years. I think he is also the first Pope to be a nightclub bouncer.

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LQoe9 TIL that a 101-year-old man, Walter Orthman, holds the Guinness World Record for the longest professional career in the same company, he has worked in a textile factory for over 84 years, he started at the age of 15.
Z85xo TIL a communist Prussian army officer, August Willich, challenged Karl Marx to a duel because he thought Marx was too conservative. Marx declined, but representatives of both men later dueled, and Marx's second was shot in the head. Willich later became a Union army major in the US Civil War
Wk804 TIL Scientists tracking the migration of swifts discovered they can stay airborne for 10 months straight without ever landing. Of those birds that did land, they still spent 99.5% of their ten months in the air.
vPBWK TIL as a teenager, noted skeptic James Randi found a pastor who claimed he could read minds. After performing the same cold-reading trick on the parishioners, the pastor's wife called police who then jailed him.
e0Qab TIL about heavy water, which is just water but slightly heavier