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TIL the HMS Belfast, which served in D-Day and fought in the Korean War, expected to be scrapped in 1967, so the Imperial War Museum, the National Maritime Museum, and the Ministry of Defence all decided that it'd be preserved. Now, it is a museum on the River Thames.

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GY5YE TIL of an organization called the National Lawyers Guild. The NLG can deploy a team of Legal Observers to a protest or demonstration. They act as a source of legal advice for protesters, and “may serve as a deterrent to unconstitutional behavior by law enforcement.” Look for their green hats!
oBn0R TIL a Dutch man named Jan de Doot, in 1651, removed his own bladder stone with a kitchen knife. He pulled it out through an incision he made in his perineum. It was the size of an egg and weighed a quarter of a pound. He lived for years after, and had the stone plated in gold.
1dk8 TIL that in 2004 a storage unit that was bought on Storage Wars was found to be full of nude images of Paris Hilton. The unit sold to an entrepreneur who uploaded the images to parisexposed.com and charged users $40 per month to access the site
xVEGw TIL Halle Berry refused to shower for 10 days to accurately portray a drug-addicted prostitute in Spike Lee's 1991 movie Jungle Fever. She felt sorry for co-star Samuel L. Jackson, "(I played) a foul-mouthed crack-smoking hoe. It’s true (I didn’t wash), ask Sam Jackson, he had to get a whiff of it!"
Wo74 TIL the name Vanessa was invented by writer Jonathan Swift in 1713 as a nickname for his lover Esther Vanhomrigh.