› added 4 years ago

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TIL what jauhar is. During foreign invasions of India, women would often throw themselves onto pyres when they felt a war or battle was lost or beyond victory. This was to avoid pillage and plunder. The practice is no longer around today, and was phased out around the Mughal era.

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pbQ8 TIL in 1846, John Torrington perished during an expedition to find the Northwest Passage. When his corpse was exhumed 138 years later, it was almost perfectly preserved – eyes wide open, clothing intact, and limbs so flexible that moving him felt like moving someone unconscious rather than dead.
Lb9r TIL that members of the Russian Mafia would tattoo of Lenin, Marx, and Engels on their chest or vital organs because firing squads could not shoot images of USSR’s founding fathers.
e0gLL TIL the "Slow - Children At Play" signs are not accepted by road engineers or public works officials, and can do more harm than good, such as when there aren't kids playing in the street, drivers can become immune to the warning and ignore it generally.
LmQp TIL of the Cathedral Effect. When ceiling height is conspicuously low or high it can promote different kinds of thinking, with higher ceilings promote abstract thinking and creativity and lower ceilings promoting concrete and detail-oriented thinking.
69oNQ TIL that in addition to there being cardinal numbers (1, 2, 3) and ordinal numbers (1st, 2nd, 3rd), there are also cardinal directions (N/E/W/S) and ordinal directions (NE/SE/NW/SW).