› added 9 years ago

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TIL that McArthur Wheeler robbed two banks after covering his face with lemon juice in the mistaken belief that, because lemon juice is usable as invisible ink, it would prevent his face from being recorded on surveillance cameras.

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Yp6kW TIL in Germany in 2001, Armin Meiwes (AKA The Master Butcher) and his volunteer murder victim jointly attempted to eat the victim's severed penis. He then killed and ate a large amount of the volunteer’s flesh. His first trial sentence was only 8 yrs 6 mo (later increased to life).
Y786G TIL The Khejarli massacre in 1730 resulted in 363 protestors being killed while protecting a forest. This gave rise to the "Chipko Movement" also known as "Tree huggers" in India
D1Vkg TIL when the NHL rejected a bid by one vote to merge with the WHA, there was a massive boycott of Molson products in Canada. Molson owned the Montreal Canadiens, who didn't want the Quebec Nordiques in the NHL. The boycott prompted Montreal to change its vote to yes, and the leagues merged in 1979.
oByjK TIL about Masoud, a black slave belonging to Fatimid Caliph Al Hakim. Al Hakim would wander the streets of Cairo looking for deceptive merchants, and when he discovered one he would have Masoud publicly sodomise the man.
OGbJg TIL the genome of coast redwood is one of the largest known, with over 26.5 billion nucleic acid base pairs—the building blocks of DNA. In contrast, the giant sequoia genome consists of 8.125 billion base pairs, while the human genome has just over 3 billion.