› added 8 years ago

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TIL when “Breaking Bad” was proposed to TV networks, 2 TNT executives loved the story pitch about a middle-aged teacher diagnosed with cancer and turning to a life of crime, but feared getting fired from their jobs over the meth storyline and wanted to change Walter White into a counterfeiter.

bx7N TIL “420” did not originate as police code for marijuana use but for “juvenile disturbance”. The use of “420” for marijuana started in 1971 at San Rafael High School, where it indicated the time, 4:20 pm, when a group of students would go to smoke under the statue of Louis Pasteur
XEpBE TIL that Matt Leblanc, before he was cast in Friends, was told by a photographer to go to a dentist and file a tooth as it was longer. Matt couldn't afford $80 for the dentist as he only had $11 left to his name, so he bought 3 packs of emery boards (Nail files) and filed the tooth himself.
kpEE TIL in 2008 there was a gamma ray burst, a violent cosmic explosion, 7.5 billion lightyears away, which is halfway across the visible universe, which could have been seen with a naked eye from the surface of the Earth. Anyone who saw it was looking billions of years into the past with their eyes.
gMEe9 TIL If college students work while going to college their employers can count up to $5200 of their pay as tuition reimbursement and make that amount tax deductible for the student. Only a few percent of employers utilize this.
xQ50 TIL that enough Purple Hearts were manufactured during WWII in anticipation of massive casualties encountered during the proposed invasion of Japan, that there still is a surplus of over 100,000 today