› added 11 years ago

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TIL Sidney Sheinberg wanted to change the title of Back To The Future to ‘Spaceman From Pluto’. Robert Zemeckis, horrified, asked Steven Spielberg for help, so Spielberg wrote Sheinberg a memo convincing him that they thought his title was just a joke, embarrassing him into dropping the name change.

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VM8AQ TIL the sex of alligator hatchlings is based purely on temperature while incubating. At 86F or lower, the babies will all be female; at 93F or higher, they will all be male. The mother can sense these changes in temperature and will alter the nest to maintain an optimum temperature.
9wWB6 TIL that the French statesman Tallyrand lived for two years in the United States during the French Revolution, meeting Benedict Arnold by chance and living in the house of Aaron Burr. When Burr moved to France in self-imposed exile ten years later, Tallyrand refused to return the favour.
bW74 TIL Stanley Kubrick considered both Robert De Niro and Robin Williams for the lead role of Jack Torrance in The Shining. Kubrick didn’t think De Niro would suit the part as he deemed De Niro not psychotic enough. He deemed Williams too psychotic for the role.
ANPy7 TIL Lucy Hester Stanhope (1776-1839), a British adventurer and archaeologist, discovered a 7-foot tall Greco-Roman statue which she then smashed into pieces and tossed into the Mediterranean because she wanted to prove to the Ottoman government that she had no interest in stealing their antiquities.
r51e TIL USA once decided to nuke the moon. The reason? “Because we can!”.