› added 5 years ago

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TIL the German folklore of Frau Perchta, a witch who would roam the German countryside for 12 days leading up to Christmas, leaving silver coins to good children and cut open the bellies and replace the organs of bad children with straw and pebbles.

M14b TIL President Eisenhower warned unending conflict would allow the Military Industrial Complex to degrade American Freedom in his farewell address.
oRYYL TIL: The Army developed a weapon concept after being inspired by a Pokémon episode in 1998. The weapon was designed to produce large scale seizures with a range of hundreds of meters. It can incapacitate people for up to 5 minutes. The Pokémon episode that inspired it caused 700 seizures.
78YWM TIL that Thailand's national dish "Pad Thai" is actually a modern creation invented to combat famine and create nationalism in the 1930s because it created double the volume of food as from the same amount of rice grains as boiled rice.
M7oMB TIL about Giovanni Battista Bugatti, known as Mastro Titta. An Italian executioner of the Papal States who executed 514 people during his 68 years of activity. Bugattis blood-stained clothes, axes, and guillotines are on display at the Museum of Criminology at Via del Gonfalone in Rome.
V6LD TIL Seth Rogan is making an R-rated Pixar-style film about “food in a grocery store that believes when you get purchased all your wildest dreams come true. They don’t realize that you get eaten. And its about them slowly realizing what happens in their after life.”