Interesting? - If you look closely, you may notice a sea turtle crying when it comes ashore. It's not because it's sad — it's because their bodies take in more salt from the sea than they can excrete in their urine. They have a gland in each eye that excretes salt into their tears. It's always working, but it only looks like tears outside the water. Some butterflies in the western Amazon, low on reliable sources of sodium, gather around river turtles and drink their tears, too.

Interesting? Salt" in Latin is sal, which eventually grew into both "salt" and "salary" in English. Roman soldiers were given an allowance for salt purchase — a salārium. That eventually made its way into Anglo-French as salarie, which was, in turn, borrowed into English as "salary." Just a fun fact to remember the next time you use your salary to buy salt.

Interesting? Throughout history, salt has been considered a precious commodity — so much so that several wars have broken out over salt mining, selling, and taxation. A few notable examples include a 14th-century war between Venice and Padua over a Venetian salt monopoly, a 16th-century revolt against the Papal Army by the city of Perugia over salt pricing, and a 19th-century conflict between Mexican Americans, who had long been using a salt flat as communal property when it was part of Mexico, and a cadre of white American businessmen who decided to lay claim to it.