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TIL that Witold Pilecki, a Polish soldier, voluntarily became a prisoner of Auschwitz in order to report what was going on in the camps to the Allies.

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aw4DZ TIL of Ferdinando Boero, a jellyfish expert who was also a fan of Frank Zappa. He reached out to Zappa asking if he'd be ok with a jellyfish named in his honor, to which Zappa replied saying "there is nothing I would like better than having a jellyfish with my name". So it was named Phialella zappai
rRQBy TIL; The U.S. government eventually disbursed more than $1.6 billion in reparations to 82,219 Japanese Americans who had been interned and their heirs the government actions that were based on "race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership."
v1pML TIL Anthony Hopkins gave up on Hollywood and returned to London’s West End theatre before his casting in The Silence of The Lambs. For his role as Hannibal Lecter, he won the Oscar for Best Actor and AFI lists the character as the #1 film villain of all time
kbLd TIL that the Chinese word for “contradiction”, 矛盾, consisting of the characters for “spear” and “shield” respectively, is said to derive from an old tale in which a Chinese merchant proclaimed to sell “spears that could pierce any shield” and “shields that could defend from all spear attacks”.
QJ1a TIL the sequel to “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” involves Wonka and the Buckets narrowly escaping death at the hands(?) of vicious aliens in a government-funded space hotel and traveling into Hell (AKA Minusland) to save Grandma Georgina.