In the 1880s, a baboon worked as a signalman for nine years on a South African railroad. He was paid in brandy and never made a mistake. Women see more nuanced shades of red because the gene that determines how a person sees the colour red resides on the X chromosome. (Men have one, women have two.) Doctors use 20 percent more anesthesia on a redhead than a person with another hair colour. Gabriel Garcia Marquez's wife, Mercedes, placed a yellow rose on his writing desk every day for 55 years. Tennis balls used to be black or white, but the International Tennis Federation changed them to yellow in 1972 to help viewers follow the match. Wimbledon keeps its tennis balls at a temperature of exactly 20ºC. Each winter, a reindeer's eye colour changes from gold to blue. This helps the retina capture more light during the sunless season. DARPA has trained honeybees to detect heroin, cocaine, and explosives. The ampersand's shape predates the word by more than 1,500 years. In the 1...
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