› added 10 years ago

160

TIL that in 1983, a man confessed to his wife’s murder after part of a female skull was discovered in a peat bog near their home in England. He was convicted based on this confession. The skull turned out to be from someone who actually died about 1750 years earlier.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

Z8yPY TIL that a holocaust denial group offered $50,000 to anyone who could prove that gas chambers were used to intentionally kill people at Auschwitz. They were forced by a judge to pay that money, and an additional $40,000, to Auschwitz survivor Mel Mermelstein who provided proof of that very fact.
mRJE TIL Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini knew each other personally and were good friends until they had a falling out when Houdini failed to prove to Doyle that his magic tricks were illusions. Doyle refused to accept this as he believed Houdini actually had supernatural powers.
D1BWr TIL Before committing suicide with gas, composer Peter Warlock locked his cat outside so that it wouldn't die with him.
vPpbr TIL about the National Weather Service bulletin for the New Orleans region of 10:11 a.m., August 28, 2005, a particularly dire warning of the devastation that Hurricane Katrina could bring. It included the warning, "PERSONS EXPOSED TO THE WINDS WILL FACE CERTAIN DEATH IF STRUCK."
aNxJ TIL Washington Square Park in NYC was once a potters field cemetery and where the fountain is today was the location the gallows where the cities guilty were hanged. There are still approximately 20,000 bodies still buried there.