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TIL A&E star Billy the Exterminator joined the Air Force at age 19 intent on a career in law enforcement; however, his military entrance examination indicated that he had an aptitude for biology, which lead to his extermination career at an Air Base.

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5YGjP TIL The Hubble Space Telescope has already required 4 servicing missions (1993, 1997, 1999, 2002). The fifth mission, that was scheduled in 2005, was canceled following the Columbia disaster (2003). Hubble's problems began when it was discovered that its optical system had a flawed mirror.
DQpGp TIL that directors Wes Craven and Sam Raimi played a game of one-upmanship by depicting each other’s movies humorously in their own films. Beginning in The Evil Dead (1981), and continuing on through A Nightmare On Elm Street (1984) and Scream (1996).
Rx51 TIL that as production for American Beauty began, DreamWorks approached twenty established directors, including several A-listers, all who turned down the project before they agreed to let Sam Mendes, a theater director, do it. It won Best Picture and Mendes won Best Director at the 2000 Oscars.
6mRW TIL that in the early 1980s to prove his hypothesis that the bacterium H.pylori causes ulcer in the stomach, researcher Barry Marshall drank a petri dish containing cultured H.pylori. He received the 2005 Nobel Prize for this work.
p8oDZ TIL that according to one 2016 analysis, 69 of the world's 100 largest economies were corporations. Walmart was 10th largest, and Toyota was larger than India.