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TIL about the Biological Resource Center in Arizona, that was raided by the FBI in 2014, where agents discovered bodies (which had been donated to "science") "cut up with chainsaws," "a woman's head sewn on a man's torso," and more, being sold for profit. The owner got probation. Agents got therapy.

16ypP TIL Norma and Bob Clark, a California couple who had a wedding in 1964, discovered 48 years later that they had never been legally married, since the pastor who married them had never sent in the couple's marriage license to the county record office.
mNVp TIL police in Germany hunted a sinister phantom killer for two years after finding the same DNA at 39 different crime scenes - only to discover that the source was a woman who made the cotton buds used to collect the sample!
4RRb TIL during the Cuban missile crisis a Soviet Submarine came under attack from depth charges, the captain assumed WW3 had started and prepared to launch a nuclear weapon, his executive officer overruled him. It turned out the depth charges were training rounds being used to signal them to surface.
69r5X TIL Comet Hale-Bopp was independently discovered in 1995 by two people: astronomer Alan Hale and amateur stargazer Thomas Bopp. Both immediately alerted the Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams to report their discovery. Hale sent an e-mail, while Bopp sent a Western Union telegram.
ADmNx TIL the fultograph was able to broadcast pictures to homes via radio in the 1920s. Using the output from the loud speaker socket it darkened an area of sensitized paper on a rotating drum.