› added 10 years ago

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TIL Christopher John Boyce was a convicted spy for the Soviet Union sentenced to 40 years in prison. In 1980, he escaped federal prison and was on the run for 1yr and 8 months, during which time he committed 17 bank robberies and studied aviation so he could eventually flee to the Soviet Union.

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QJDBX TIL the song “Mah Nà Mah Nà,” made famous by the Muppets on “Sesame Street” and “The Muppet Show,” originally appeared in the Italian film “Svezia, inferno e paradiso” (“Sweden: Heaven and Hell”), a 1968 exploitation documentary film about wild sexual activity in Sweden.
AXed TIL due to its popularity with Muslims, until 1600 church leaders were calling coffee “the bitter invention of Satan”. Upon tasting coffee Pope Clement VIII declared, “This devil’s drink is so delicious…we should cheat the devil by baptizing it.”
wLRw6 TIL that a Serbian high-school biology textbook used a picture of Nicolas Cage and Holly Hunter in "Raising Arizona" on the cover from 1993 to 2001.
LkVjV TIL The briefcase in Pulp Fiction originally contained diamonds but that was deemed too predictable so it was decided that the contents were never to be seen. This way each audience member would fill in the blank with their own contents.
axeb TIL residents of the city of Glasgow in Scotland have a disproportionately low life expectancy and no one’s sure why.