› added 7 months ago

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TIL that Weird Al's Phantom Menace parody 'The Saga Begins' was recorded a month before the film released in May 1999. Yankovic was denied an early screening by Lucasfilm, but managed to almost exactly piece together the plot by researching rumours posted on Star Wars fan forums.

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VM7Rk TIL in 1857 Charles Lockock, believing there to be a cause-effect relationship between masturbation and seizures, began to treat his patients with potassium bromide which was known to reduce sex drive. In doing so, he serendipitously discovered what would become the first drug therapy for epilepsy.
QbLa TIL of Roald Amundsen, a Norwegian Explorer. In 1909, he tried to be the first man to reach the North Pole, but was beaten by Robert Peary. Upon hearing of Peary’s victory, Amundsen immediately mounted an expedition to the South Pole, which he became the first to reach in 1911.
wgOo TIL: When Apple was going public and assigning shares, Jobs cut out several employees. Wozniak then gave some of his personal shares to them, because he believed it was the right thing to do.
9YRem TIL about Smoky the dog, who was a Yorkshire dog found in New Guinea by an American Soldier during WWII and survived 150 Air Raids and once parachuted from 30ft in the air. She was later rewarded with Eight Battle Stars and was also the First Recorded Therapy Dog.
ZpkRG TIL that in Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver, each starter has a 1 in 8,192 chance of being shiny, and you can see if it's shiny on the selection screen. All three being shiny at once is theoretically possible, but has never been recorded — the odds are 1 in 550 billion.