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TIL - From 1900s - 1970s, the gay community of England sometimes communicated through a language called Polari, to protect themselves in a land in which homosexuality was illegal.

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d8J48 TIL about the Alcubierre drive, a solution of Einstein's field equations in general relativity by which a spacecraft could theoretically achieve apparent faster-than-light travel without breaking any physical laws. It would have to be made of matter of negative energy density, which may not exist.
J1ZwV TIL The Count of Estaing, best known for leading a French fleet during the American Revolutionary war, would be sent to the guillotine because of letters with the French Queen. Before his execution, d'Estaing wrote, "After my head falls off, send it to the English, they will pay a good deal for it!"
JbMv TIL: “Doctors can use the foreskins of circumcised infants to grow skin for burn victims. Just one foreskin can create 23,000 square meters of skin”
ELN7 TIL Roman Emperor Caligula once ordered his guards to throw an entire section of the audience into an arena during the intermission to be eaten by the wild beasts because there were no prisoners to be used and he was bored.
aw1aL TIL in psychology "cognitive dissonance" requires distress from the incompatible ideas. The distress, if it results from incompatible ideas, is what's theorized to cause one to resolve the contradiction, if one is not distressed they are unlikely to be motivated to reduce the cognitive dissonance