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TIL about “E-Squadron” or “The Increment”. Which is perhaps the most elite and secretive special forces group in the U.K.- maybe even better than the SAS.

N7e4e TIL while his opponent traveled all over the country campaigning, McKinley won both the 1896 and 1900 presidential elections by staying at his home in Canton, Ohio and giving speeches off his front porch to whoever showed up to listen.
nWXxo TIL the BIPM doesn't use a physical rod that's exactly 1 metre similar to the physical "Kilogram" specimen, instead use concise measurement of light & time defined in 1984 by the CGPM as the distance light travels, in a vacuum, in 1/299,792,458 secs with time measured by a cesium-133 atomic clock.
9YJxp TIL The British inventor of the quicksort algorithm, Sir Tony Hoare, also created the null reference and called it his "billion-dollar mistake ... has led to innumerable errors, vulnerabilities, and system crashes ... probably caused a billion dollars of pain and damage in the last forty years".
8KOX TIL that human poop and farts get their foul smell from the chemical compounds Skatole and Indole (among others). At low concentrations, these compounds smell flowery, and are used in perfumes. USA and Israel have used Skatole in crowd control sprays—the stench does not wash off skin for 3 days.
10mO TIL Early Zenith TV remotes changed channels by sound. When you push the button, a small hammer strikes an aluminum rod, triggering a sound above our hearing range that’s picked up by the TV.