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TIL about a bollock knife, widely used in the middle ages, named after the ahem decorative handle...

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oB4Z8 TIL that Charles Darwin brought back a 5 year old Tortoise named Harriet from the Galápagos Islands that would be later owned by Steve Irwin. Harriet died in 2006 at the age of 176.
69Mnw TIL of Ripton, Massachusetts, a fictitious town created in 1985 by a professor at UMass-Amherst to protest the Boston-based state government's neglect of rural Western Mass towns. He applied and was approved for grants and funding from the state before the hoax was uncovered.
GY0Zj TIL: In 1901, the assassin of President William McKinley was tried, convicted AND executed only 45 days after McKinley’s death
vx8R TIL that American rock band Green Day had finished an album in 2003, but it was never released because the master tracks were stolen from the studio. Instead of re-recording the album, the band decided to write and record an entire new album, which turned out to be their hit record American Idiot
yQJyM TIL that if you add 250ml of ethanol to 250ml of water, you get less than 500ml of liquid. This is due to strong hydrogen bonding that draws the different molecules close together, and because ethanol interferes with any open structures in the water, causing the molecules to pack closer together.