› added 5 years ago

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TIL that humans can have far more chromosomal variation than just XX or XY. Some possible combinations include XXXXY, XXYY, and XXXXX. Also, the XYY condition, in which males have an extra Y chromosome, is often undiagnosed because there are so few symptoms.

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gje7 TIL that in Quake III Arena, when developers needed to calculate x^(-½), one used a piece of code and the hexadecimal number 0x5f3759df to calculate it about 4 times faster than floating-point division. It was so strange another developer commented in the code “what the fuck?”
R7eZa TIL Utah's Health Dept attempted to distribute free Utah-sex-jokes condoms with saying like "Enjoy your mountin'", "Explore Utah's Caves" and "Sl,UT" before the governor stepped in to stop the theme (but not the condom distribution).
awGPL TIL that after their victory at the Battle of Marathon, the Greeks carved a statue of Nemesis (the goddess who punishes the arrogant) out of an enormous block of marble that the Persians had brought to the battle with the intention of carving a monument to their victory over the Greeks.
rR6v4 TIL that the United States' first department store was created in Utah, and lasted around 130 years before being sold to the Macy's Corporation
wob48 TIL about Eugene Falleni, an Italian-born transgender man who lived in Australia under the name Harry Leo Crawford, was convicted in 1917 of murdering his wife, Annie Birkett. He had lived for years passing as a man, working in male-dominated jobs, and even remarrying.