› added 5 years ago

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TIL that Simon Tatham, creator of the popular terminal emulator PuTTY, suffers from a condition known as anosmia, meaning he does not have a sense of smell.

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04kp TIL there is a “Redundancy Theory of Truth”, the belief that saying something is true is meaningless; e.g. “It is true that 2+2=4” means the same thing as “2+2=4”. Thus “truth” is a construct of language devoid of meaning. This solves the famous Liar Paradox (“This sentence is false.”)
R7eY8 TIL the term “the big apple” originally referred to horse racing. The city got its most famous nickname from a local newspaper’s horse racing column in the 1920s. Prior to the city’s adoption of the nickname, the phrase “Big Apple” was used to describe a big money prize at important horse races.
LKEp TIL American murderer Richard Honeck was jailed in 1899 and not released until 1963. During his 64 years in prison, he received one letter and two visitors. “I’d have to be pretty careful if I got paroled,” he said later. “There must be an awful lot of traffic… compared with what I remember.”
gMn9L TIL in 1991 Isaac Wright Jr. was wrongfully convicted of being a drug kingpin in New Jersey and sentenced to life in prison. While in prison, he studied law to pursue his own appeal and extracted a confession of police misconduct from the detective responsible for his conviction, exonerating Wright.
x6vY1 TIL that evening-oriented (more alert at night) women (but not men) tend to be more unrestricted in sexual behavior, attitude, and desire according to a worldwide survey known as the Sociosexual Orientation Inventory.