› added 5 years ago

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TIL that when Randy Pausch from the Last Lecture, who dreamed of "being Captain Kirk", was given a fatal diagnosis of pancreatic he received an autographed picture of Kirk from William Shatner that read "I don't believe in the no-win scenario"

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via reddit.com

neXAP TIL 1981 Cadillac Eldorados were fitted with a metal plate under the driver's seat to fix a balancing problem. This saved mob associate Frank Rosenthal's life when the plate shielded him from the force of a car bomb exploding under his Eldorado.
erKE TIL at 52, Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman married 18-year-old Mandy Smith but divorced after a year. Bill’s 30-year-old son then Stephen married Mandy’s mother, age 46. If Bill and Mandy had remained married, Stephen would have been his father’s father-in-law and his own grandpa.
GYND7 TIL that the desert planet of Tatootine in Star Wars was originally meant to be a jungle planet. One of the producers found sites in the Philippines, but thought director George Lucas would be "itchy" from all of the filming in the jungle, so Lucas decided to make Tatootine a desert planet.
7Q47 TIL that the word “quockerwodger” can mean either “a wooden toy figure which jerks its limbs about when pulled by a string”, or a politician whose strings are pulled by someone else.
PYL7Z TIL that CERN (large hadron collider) has a large statue of SHIVA standing in its courtyard. Gifted from India - SHIVA is the deity responsible for destroying the world/worlds.