› added 9 months ago

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Today I learned that epigenetics can be used to predict sex across mammals at close to 100% accuracy. A notable exception are marmosets, and methods that work on other mammals can only predict marmoset sex accurately 66% of the time.

Read more ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

via reddit.com

8argL TIL that we don't know how the great French mathematician Adrien-Marie Legendre really looked like, because the only surviving portrait of him is an angry face in a caricaturist's work. For 200 years, the portrait of a French politician was wrongly attributed to him and used in old textbooks.
MeQOA TIL monkeys can learn to use money. Capuchins that were taught to exchange silver discs for treats began budgeting for foods they liked, buying more of something when the price dropped, and started gambling. Eventually, rich monkeys even figured out they could pay each other for sex.
X0Xwj TIL US president Benjamin Harrison was widowed while in office in 1892. Four years later, Harrison married his dead wife's niece and had a daughter with her. His adult children who were around 40 years old, were horrified that their father married their cousin and didn't attend the wedding.
vP1kD TIL the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds developed a 'splatometer' for insect analysis. Which is a post card-sized piece of plastic attached to a car that catches bugs as one drives.
OGkP6 TIL that the assassination of President WilliamMcKinley by Leon Czolgosz in 1901 led to the formation of modern-day Secret Service and also the FBI. In addition, after he was executed by electric chair a month after his trial Czolgosz's coffin was covered in acid so his body would dissolve.