› added 6 years ago

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TIL Gwen Stefani wrote "Hollaback Girl" in response to Courtney Love calling her a cheerleader in an interview

Z8wW4 TIL when The South's Gonna Do It Again by Charlie Daniels Band, a song about Southern rock, was used by the KKK, Daniels said "I'm damn proud of the South, but I sure as hell am not proud of the Ku Klux Klan. [..] It was not written to promote hate groups."
N7KGP TIL of Jim Haynes, the man who "invited the world over for dinner". As an American living in Paris, Jim had an open-house policy every Sunday evening for more than 40 years, where anyone was welcome at an informal dinner. It is estimated over 150.000 people attended over the years.
8KP8 TIL Your reality is 15 seconds in the making: When you really focus your attention on something, you’re said to be “in the present moment.” But research suggests that the “present moment” is actually a chunk of the recent past, and it’s about 15 seconds long.
1aA78 TIL that the Soviet AA-2 Atoll missile was reverse engineered from a US AIM-9 Sidewinder after it became lodged in a Chinese MiG-17 without exploding. The lead Soviet engineer at Vympel said, the missile was a "university offering a course in missile construction technology."
W19N TIL that James Bond originally used a Beretta 418 until a fan of the novels (and small arms expert) wrote to Ian Flemming criticizing it as “a woman’s gun”. When Flemming had Bond switch to his iconic Walther PPK in Dr. No, he wrote the fan into the scene as MI6’s armorer