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TIL a young man impersonated a police officer with an authentic-looking uniform and car and then set up his own fake police station where he kept records of possible crimes and interrogated “suspects” who were handcuffed to a chair

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awaob TIL the Roman Catholic Church hired castrati, young boy vocalists who were castrated to prevent puberty allowing them to sing soprano, mezzo-soprano, or contralto well into their 40s. The practice started in the mid-1500s, reached its height in 1730, and ended in 1903. The last castrati died in 1922
0GQy TIL that on Nov. 28, 2013, comet ISON will fly through the sun’s atmosphere little more than a million km from the stellar surface. If the comet survives without breaking up it could emerge glowing as brightly as the Moon, visible near the sun in broad daylight.
VMrk0 TIL that it takes only 8-minutes for sunlight to reach the Earth, but can take up to 170,000 years for it to travel from the Sun's core to its surface. This is because the photons travel in a nonlinear path known as a random walk process - looks pretty similar to a convoluted zig zag.
N8OJ TIL Transmutation (turning one substance into another by chemical reaction, like in alchemy) is real. You can turn lead into gold with enough nuclear chemistry. But it would be a very tiny amount of gold and spent more money to make it than what it’s worth.
rRdmo TIL there is a giant replica of the Vatican in Africa, took $300 million and five years to build but nowdays is used by only a few hundred.