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TIL that Polish intelligence officer Witold Pilecki volunteered for a resistance operation to be imprisoned in Auschwitz in order to gather intelligence about the camp. He organized a resistance movement in the camp, sent information to the Allies about what was happening there, and escaped in 1943.

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VZvm TIL “Suicide” doors, which are hinged at the rear rather than at the front, were popular with mobsters during the 1930s. Supposedly, this was because the design of the doors made it significantly easier to push passengers out of moving vehicles.
wRoJ TIL that Iqbal Masih was sold into bondage by his debt-ridden family aged four and escaped when he was 10, after which he went to school and helped 3,000 other Pakistani children escape bonded labor. A symbol of child labor in the developing world, he was shot and killed in 1995, aged only 12.
nnXb TIL in Finland most fines are tied to the income of the offender to ensure that both they can afford it, and that it will adequately hurt. One Nokia executive was hit with a $103,600 ticket for driving 15kph over the limit believed to be the most expensive speeding ticket ever.
RyYQ TIL Pope Benedict XVI was once a member of Hitler Youth after his church group was forced to merge with it.
4XWGb TIL about Maximilian I, the younger brother of Franz- Josef, the only Hapsburg monarch of Mexico. During the Franco-Mexican war, Napoleon III gave Maximilian a huge chunk of Mexico in 1864 and Maximilian made a lot of liberal reforms at the time. He was executed 3 years later.