› added 5 months ago

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TIL that the infamous Pac-Man kill screen is caused by an overflow error causing the game to try and draw 256 pieces of fruit. However, the code then starts drawing random garbled pieces of memory, causing half the screen to get covered in random graphics that the game interprets as fruit.

JYm7l TIL the Beatles LP "Yesterday and Today" originally featured a cover depicting the band laughing while covered in mutilated and decapitated baby dolls. The cover was intended as a Vietnam protest, with Lennon saying "If the public can accept something as cruel as the war, they can accept this cover"
b9L87 TIL That nobody really knows how to correctly play Beethoven's famous "Für Elise" - original notes were never found and were published years after Beethoven's death by Ludwig Nohl. Pianists are still arguing how to play this piece.
rRkD0 TIL about Infinite Corridor, which connects the main buildings of MIT. Twice a year, the university celebrates MIThenge, an event which occurs when the corridor aligns with the plane of the sun, resulting in daylight filling the whole corridor.
eRdE TIL that Isaac Newton predicted that the world would end around 2060. He wrote this in a letter in 1704 after studying different religious texts. He also “wrote more about theology and alchemy than science and math combined.”
VMZ5p TIL that British merchant seaman in WW2 received no pay from the moment their ship sank. If the seaman was fortunate to survive the sinking, the shipping company regarded it as "non-working time"