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TIL that the Catcholic Church still excommunicates people, with the last excommunication being in 2020, when Jeremy Leatherby, a priest in Sacramento, refused to recognize the legitimacy of Pope Francis.

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90N6 TIL The term “grandfather clause” comes from the Jim Crow era. Literacy tests, poll taxes, and quizzes were designed to keep blacks from voting. But these standards barred poor whites from voting as well. The solution was to pass laws that allowed descendants of past voters to be “grandfathered in”.
45eJ TIL a man built a cutting-edge stealth boat for the US Navy. Then the government tried to put him out of business.
X0PbQ TIL that author James Patterson helped write the famous Toys R Us jingle.
mxdGR TIL The Hagia Sophia has some odd scratches inside. For hundreds of years, their origin and purpose was unknown. It was later discovered that they are Futhark runes made by a Norseman far from home. A message, carved into the building he knew would never be destroyed. The message? “Hafdan was here.”
j61pE TIL spaces between words in documents first appeared in Irish and Anglo-Saxon Bibles in the seventh century. Paleographers today identify the extinction of 'scriptio continua' as a critical factor in augmenting the widespread absorption of knowledge in the Pre-Modern Era.