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TIL that in 2015, 2 men escaped paying for their £140 (€195) taxi fare by bringing a mannequin wearing a hat with them into the car. After they both got out (leaving the mannequin) they told the cabbie where their “sleeping friend” lived and that he would settle up payment at the end of the journey.

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YpeGZ TIL each year U of Chicago students embark on a scavenger hunt. The 1999 list included a French Canadian, Fisher Price Baby's First Flamethrower, 5 Mensa membership cards and a nuclear reactor. Justin Kasper and Fred Niell built a plutonium-producing reactor in a single day to get 2nd place
pYyw4 TIL in 1862 John Langdon Down was the first to describe a distinct mental disability, calling it "Mongolism" due to his perception that children with it shared facial similarities. Now called Down Syndrome, was discovered in the 1950s to be caused by the presence a third copy of chromosome 21.
ANk97 TIL there is a difference between shock and electrocution which is short for electric execution. An electrocution results in death. While people survive getting shocked, they may struggle for the rest of their lives with burn scars, seizures, chronic pain, severe headaches, nerve damage, paralyzed
691G8 TIL about the Scunthorpe problem, which is the unintentional blocking of online content because of a censored string. AOL refused service to Scunthorpe, England because their filters kept censoring the word 'cunt'.
8aRXX TIL a nurse paid over $400,000 to a Nigerian 419 scam over the course of 3 years re-mortgaging her house and using her husband's retirement savings