› added 10 years ago

100

TIL Jiminy Cricket was initially drawn as a realistic cricket, but Disney wanted something more likable, so the supervising animator came up with what he described as a “little man with an egg head and no ears”, saying “the only thing that makes him a cricket is because we call him one.”

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pYrWZ TIL that the morning after the Titanic sank, a man on a nearby vessel who was unaware of the sinking photographed an iceberg with a red streak he suspected to be paint from a ship. For years the law firm for White Star Line, the Titanic’s owner, had the original displayed in their office.
16Gar TIL that Paul Hogan - aka Crocodile Dundee - got his start in show business on a TV talent show. He billed himself as a tap-dancing knife thrower, but could do neither. It was a fake act done specifically to make the judges look foolish.
Y7aBB TIL about the Lazarus Taxon, or the collection of species thought to be extinct but rediscovered, sometimes millions of years later.
R7b84 TIL a shark helped another shark give birth at an Auckland, New Zealand aquarium in 2009. The first shark bit the abdomen of the second, freeing the pups inside. One aquarium staff member said "It had to bite a certain part to let them out and do it without killing the babies or her."
gML4X TIL: Before being a comedian, Burt Kreischer was featured in Rolling Stone for being a prolific 25 year old student partier at FSU and is thought to be the inspiration for Van Wilder.