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TIL that Pope John Paul II was shot and critically injured in an assassination attempt. The Pope survived and forgave the attacker, and even requested that the man be pardoned from life imprisonment. After the Pope died, his would-be assassin visited his tomb and laid flowers.

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via reddit.com

KYBWB TIL Ted Fujita, meteorology scientist and father of the Fujita tornado scale, had his life saved by the weather. He was in Kokura on the day of the second atomic bombing. Kokura was the first target, which couldn’t be done due to bad weather, they went with the secondary target of Nagasaki.
jdaa TIL that drinking caffeine-containing beverages can reduce the harmful effects of sun-exposure, effectively acting like an oral sunscreen
WkJ1B TIL Playboy Hugh Hefner's young son, Cooper, teaches a course called "New Landscape of Media" at Chapman University. Hefner is also on the Board of Directors for Children Of The Night, an organization that has been dedicated to fighting human trafficking and child prostitution
W4jo TIL that in EverQuest, the sale of valuable items for both in-game platinum and for actual money allows exchange rates to be worked out. The BBC reported in 2002 that EQ was the 77th richest country in the world, between Russia and Bulgaria, with a higher GDP per capita than both China and India.
xRyw TIL in 2004, when asked about how he got the emails, addresses and pictures of so many people using Facebook Mark Zuckerburg replied “People just submitted it. I don’t know why. They "trust me”. Dumb f**ks.“