› added 8 years ago

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TIL Icelandic people are a mix of both Norse and Irish people. Between 20 and 25 per cent of Icelandic founding males had Irish ancestry, while a majority of the original female population were Irish females

W71od TIL of Leonard Lake, a serial killer who had abducted, abused, and murdered at least eleven people in the 1980s. He was caught after accidentally giving police the ID of Robin Stapley, one of Lake's victims, attempting to pass it off as his own.
AXW4 TIL that the copyright extension on Mickey Mouse will expire in 2023 and he will then be in the public domain, unless another copyright extension is passed
Yp97A TIL that the inhabitants of islands that were temporarily occupied during the Pacific War thought they were being visited by gods, and when the soldiers eventually left, they formed rituals that imitate planes, runways, and marches to try to bring them back. Many still do this to this day.
9OWQ TIL the first thing ever bought and sold across the Internet was a bag of marijuana. In 1971 or 1972, students at Stanford University’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory used ARPANET—the earliest iteration of the Internet—to arrange a marijuana deal with their counterparts at the MIT
lxRG TIL in 1350 when bubonic plague struck England, the Scots took the opportunity to invade the country. But instead, the Scottish army caught the disease, was routed by the English and the fleeing army inadvertently spread the plague across Scotland