› added 7 years ago

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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.

N7j6E TIL a number of NFL players have gotten a fatal neurodegenerative disease called ALS. Including Waters, Hazeltine, and Lewis who were all on the San Francisco 49ers roster in 1963 or 1964.
7r7lL TIL That the Reading Company, immortalized as a space on the Monopoly Board Game, sold off all of it's railroad assets in the 1970s and now operates movie theaters.
8PkK TIL that every September, Usenet would get an influx of college freshman who would have to learn Usenet netiquette; in September of 1993, AOL began to offer Usenet access to its’ many users, overwhelming Usenet’s social norms and causing an “Eternal September,” which has lasted 7,279 days
QJ1Dd TIL James Derham was a black man who worked as an assistant under several doctors who owned him in the 1700s. He learned about medicine from them which lead him to open his own practice after he was freed. He was the first African-American to practice medicine in the U.S.
1aL1d TIL Jack Livesey fabricated a military record that included service in the Falklands War, 20 years in the parachute regiment and reaching the Colour Sergeant rank. He worked as a historian and lecturer on the basis of these falsehoods; in reality he simply served as an army cook for 3 years.