› added 7 years ago

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TIL we have three types of tears - basal, reflex and psychic. Psychic tears, the ones we produce when we are sad, have a different chemical make up than the other two and contain a natural painkiller, leucine enkephalin, which is perhaps why we feel better after we cry.

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W5Q4 TIL courts are increasingly turning to website Urban Dictionary to clarify modern slang language. It has notably been used in a supreme court sexual harrassment case in Tennessee in 2013.
LkxPQ TIL in 2004 a woman in Texas was arrested and faced a year in jail for selling a vibrator to two undercover cops posing as a married couple at a private party
bx7N TIL “420” did not originate as police code for marijuana use but for “juvenile disturbance”. The use of “420” for marijuana started in 1971 at San Rafael High School, where it indicated the time, 4:20 pm, when a group of students would go to smoke under the statue of Louis Pasteur
AN107 TIL the World War II submarine USS Tang sank herself with her own torpedo. Of the 30 survivors, 13 escaped via the only recorded use of a "Momsen Lung," a primitive rebreather device. 9 others escaped and were captured & beaten by survivors from ships Tang had previously sank.
e0Lpb TIL The British WW1 'Unknown Warrior' was given a state funeral with full military honours, entombed with a medieval crusader's sword, accompanied by a guard of 100 Victoria Cross recipients, as well as 100 women, each of whom had lost her husband and all her sons in the war.