3. TIL that Belarus is the last country in Europe that still uses the death penalty...

TIL that Belarus is the last country in Europe that still uses the death penalty. The convicts are shot in the back of the head with a silenced PB-9 pistol. The whole procedure, starting with the announcement about denied appeals and ending with the gunshot, lasts no longer than two minutes.

My wife is from Belarus and I was in aww when I visited Minsk. They still have statues of Lenin in the main square there. After they separated from the Soviet Union in 91', they elected their president (Lukashenko) and the first thing he did was change the constitution to enable unlimited term limits as president. Since then, he wins the elections by a landslide even though most of the people I talked to say (quietly to me of course) that they hate him. There was a big demonstration after an election not too long ago where they police were beating the hell out of people in the square. The people then did a silent protest and others clapped their hands in the main square as a way to demonstrate their disapproval. Since then, if you go the main square and clap your hands, you can be arrested for it.

There was a "terrorists" bombing that happened there during all of this political dispute from the elections and people were crying about elections being rigged. The "terrorists" they captured were immediately caught, tried, and executed before anyone could really ask questions to the suspects. Many people really think the government actually did the bombings themselves and blamed it on a few people to try and take heat off the election process scandal. http://www.economist.com/blogs/easternapproaches/2011/04/belarus_bomb

On the upside, their women are absolutely beautiful there. It's weird that the men can look like eggheads yet a vast majority women look like supermodels. Another amazing thing is that people there really love McDonalds. The lines for McDonalds was insane and people would bring their dates there with flowers and all. http://imgur.com/a/GrfEH

/r/todayilearned Thread Parent Link - en.wikipedia.org
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