can the clipboard hold multiple items and can they be viewed and selected

Windows 10, LibreOffice 5.0.3.2

Yes & yes.

menu:Paste | Special

Windows 10 (1803 and above) . Press Windowskey+V, in the dialog that appears turn on clipboard history. This isn’t part of LibreOffice but of Windows.

I always hated MS Office clearing the clipboard when I started it up to paste something into word or excel. In excel it would lose the contents of a cell add soon as you did something else. It was a liability rather than a benefit