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TIL the last Great Auk (the extinct penguin of the Northern Hemisphere) seen in the UK was captured and tied up by 3 men. The men kept the bird alive until a large storm hit the area. Thinking the bird was a witch, they killed it.

ANdo7 TIL the Palmarian Catholic Church, a heretical sect, founded in Spain in 1978, claims to be the true Catholic Church with its own line of popes, starting with Clemente Domínguez, and imposes cult-like restrictions on its members, including bans on television, smartphones, and contact with outsiders.
X0k8 TIL: King Edward II was murdered by having a horn pushed into his anus through which a red-hot iron was inserted, burning out his internal organs without marking his body.
1YnV TIL the bad grammar and spelling errors found in scam emails & phishing attempts from Nigerian princes (etc) is done on purpose; spell checkers are intentionally not used: Research from Microsoft suggests that email scammers maximise profits by entrapping only the most gullible who overlook spelling
e0Peg TIL "Father Time"; the Roman god, Saturn; the Greek god, Cronos; and the Grim Reaper are different versions of the same mythic character.
jNDQj TIL Herman Hollerith's invention, the punched card tabulating machine, patented in 1884, marks the beginning of the era of mechanized binary code and semiautomatic data processing systems, and his concepts dominated high-tech for nearly a century. His inventions led to the creation of IBM in 1924.