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TIL there is a group of genes (HOX) that code for the proper formation of limbs in most animals. When flies have defective HOX genes, instead of antenas, they grow more legs

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1WL4 TIL Fanta is available in hundreds of flavors, including “Mushroom,” “Red Tangerine,” “Lychee Soursop,” and “Banana Fermented Milk”
EMOx TIL Anthony Hopkins’s inspiration for Hannibal Lecter was a cat. “…I sort of modeled my walk on a cat’s. I like cats, and I love the way they pad around. I wanted to get that feel when Lecter is padding very quietly and stealthily in the shadows around the streets of Florence.”
oRKZ8 TIL - the 1923 Okeh Laughing Record from Germany had no credited performers, making it the first and only anonymous record to ever chart
EWao TIL there’s a compression algorithm that shrinks text to half the size of what popular compressors can achieve, but it takes 1000x more time and 30x more RAM. It shrinks Wikipedia to 1/8 its size, takes 3 days per Gb.
wL0xE TIL of the Harvard Sentences, a set of phonetically-balanced words used to test audio quality. It is used to test phone call quality, text-to-speech programming, and more.