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TIL "Fatso the Fat-Arsed Wombat" was an unofficial mascot of the 2000 Summer Olympics. He proved so popular that the Australian Olympic Committee attempted to ban athletes appearing with Fatso to stop him upstaging their official mascots.

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nG5b TIL An Ohio Judge, who each year would move a drunken-driving trial from his courtroom to a local high school as a cautionary tale to students, was arrested himself on a DUI after he hit a County bus, failed to stop, then refused a sobriety test after being pulled over by police
xVZ91 TIL that on the island of Melanesia, natives there reenact US military parades and made a fake runway with fake airplanes to pray for the return of a US soldier by the name of John Frum so that he could bring them cargo filled with industrial blessings such as medicine, guns, and canned goods.
MBLV TIL: When asked about atheists Pope Francis replied “They are our valued allies in the commitment to defending human dignity, in building a peaceful coexistence between peoples and in safeguarding and caring for creation.”
0w8d1 TIL of Jean Lanfray, a labourer who murdered his wife and children in a drunken rage in Switzerland in 1905. His murders were blamed solely on the influence of absinthe, despite the fact that he’d drunk many other alcoholic beverages. It set off a moral panic, and Switzerland soon banned absinthe.
6gRJ TIL the Slovakian women’s hockey team qualified for the 2010 Olympics by beating Bulgaria 82-0, and then lost to team Canada in Vancouver 18-0