› added 6 months ago

17

TIL that part of the reason the Mafia is so powerful in southern Italy is because Italian judges who score well on exams get to choose their post; those sent to work in Calabria usually request to be transferred right away.

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14Ad TIL President Roosevelt collapsed while being painted. He never regained consciousness before dying. The unfinished painting captures his last waking moment.
0wKy1 TIL of Mariya Tsukanova, a Soviet medic during WW2. She saved dozens of lives, and took up a machine gun, firing until she lost consciousness from injuries. Being outnumbered, she was brutally tortured and executed by the Japanese and killed. She was named "Hero of the Soviet Union." posthumously.
woOo6 TIL former First Lady Barbara Bush’s mother spent time in Europe away from her husband with Alister Crowley who is understood to have undergone a series of sex rituals around this time approximately 8-9 months before Barbara’s birth.
GA7JN TIL Simeon Stylites lived on top of columns for 37 years. Simeon did this as a form of asceticism because when he lived in a cave people kept making pilgrimages to him and asking him religious questions. Ultimately his column life drew in even bigger crowds who would climb ladders to talk to him.
4kK7a TIL: Sweden conducted the Vipeholm experiment on the intellectual disabled in the 1950s, where they fed them a large amount of sweets to see how it affects the formation of cavities. It was sponsored by the sugar industry and dentists. It sound experiment, but deemed unethical years after.