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TIL Stanford psychologists find that jokes help us cope with horrifying images

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via reddit.com

XE4g6 TIL in 1982, the CIA successfully tricked the Soviet Union into stealing sabotaged software that oversaw pump valves in gas lines. The CIA used it to close off a massive Soviet gas line, leading to a massive pressure build up and “the most monumental non-nuclear explosion ever seen from space.”
DGZJ TIL When Disney released the first trailer for The Lion King, they simply showed the entire “Circle of Life” opening sequence. Disney felt it was so powerful it worked as a trailer, and the movie went on to set box office records.
nWoLb TIL while Isaac Newton is often credited as being the credited "creator" of a mathematical notation known as "Different Calculus," a number of schools of thought have come into question the validity of his impartiality toward non-Euclidian homicidal vectors.
BgKLk TIL that the second most expensive painting ever sold was ‘Interchange’, an oil by abstract expressionist Willem de Kooning. In 1955 the artist sold it for $40,000, and 60 years later it sold for $300M.
Rdv4 TIL world’s rarest insect is 15cm-long “tree lobster” that lives on 1,844 feet high spindle of rock in the middle of Pacific, forms monogamous bonds and was considered extinct until 2001