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TIL Matt Damon started writing Good Will Hunting (1997) as a final assignment for a playwriting class he was taking at Harvard University. At first, it was written as a thriller about a young man who possesses a superior intelligence and is targeted by the government with heavy-handed recruitment.

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XkYP TIL that on St Patrick’s day 1990 two thieves dressed as Boston Police stole artwork valued at approximately $500 million from Boston’s Gardner Museum. The crime is unsolved and remains the largest property crime in US history.
d6Ej TIL falcon breeders often let the male birds copulate with their heads, while the breeder wears a special semen-collecting hat. The breeder then courts a female bird of the same species and squirts the collected semen into her using a syringe. All this due to a process known as sexual imprinting.
e9og TIL The Walking Dead actor Norman Reedus once hit his head on set and was rushed to the hospital for stitches via ambulance. Being driven the way back by set staff - still under the influence of medication - he encountered a flipped 18-wheeler and pulled the unconscious driver out into safety.
78DvP TIL that if light moved slower than the speed of sound, our perception of reality would fundamentally change, as we’d hear events before seeing them.
wLreP TIL that the term “spook” was a popular slur for black people during WII. Its use was especially prevalent in the military. Nazi Germany’s Air Force was called the “Luftwaffe” so some people referred to the African-American Tuskegee Airmen as the “Spookwaffe”, including the pilots themselves.