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TIL author Ian Fleming was so horrified at the prospect of his impending marriage that he wrote a book to distract himself. In 2 months he finished CASINO ROYALE, the first in a series about a spy named James Bond.

PDJw TIL that the pizza Margherita owes its name to Italy’s Queen Margherita who in 1889 visited the Pizzeria Brandi in Naples. The Pizzaiolo (pizza maker) on duty that day, Rafaele Esposito created a pizza for the Queen that contained the three colors of the new Italian flag.
oe88 TIL that the trajectory of the first American manned spaceflight was calculated by an African-American woman. She was so good at computations that she was asked to check the work of the computers when they were first used by NASA to calculate John Glenn’s flight path.
WkOmA TIL France has 58 nuclear reactors, generating 71.6% of the country's total electricity, a larger percent than any other nation. France turned to nuclear in response to the 1973 oil crisis. The situation was summarized in a slogan, "In France, we do not have oil, but we have ideas."
64lJ TIL in 2011 the FOX Network threatened to cancel The Simpsons if production costs weren’t lowered. All the voice actors accepted a 30% paycut to each earn $300,000 per episode
JYXR4 TIL Goldin Finance 117, an unfinished skyscraper in Tianjin, China. The tower was expected to be built to a total height of 597 m. Construction began in 2008 but was twice halted, and it remains unfinished and unoccupied