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TIL that the film version of the musical "In the Heights" nearly wasn't produced because Universal wanted a bankable star in the cast. While the film was in limbo, its writer Lin-Manuel Miranda went on vacation and bought a copy of Ron Chernow's "Hamilton", which inspired the show

9wg06 TIL in 1895, Alva Vanderbilt shocked American society by divorcing William K. Vanderbilt after allegations of adultery. Alva secured millions, received several estates, and used her fortune to support women’s suffrage, efforts to uplift women of all races and champion social and prison reform.
nWKOr TIL: mRNA was first tested in the 1990s, but a 2005 breakthrough made it stable for medical use.Early attempts failed as mRNA degraded too quickly. In 2005, scientists developed lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) to protect it, enabling new medical applications
l7ZeK TIL in 2020 a woman took an online DNA test which showed a 22% match with a man who she'd eventually discover to be her still alive uncle, who was kidnapped in 1951 at the age of six & had been missing for 70 years. After he was abducted in Oakland, he was flown to the east coast & raised there.
bd77 TIL a four year old boy named Bobby Dunbar went missing on a family trip, 8 months later he was found and reunited with his family. Nearly 100 years later, DNA proved that the child reunited with the Dunbar family was not Bobby but rather a boy named Charles Anderson
yVgb8 TIL that Australia is wider than the moon. NASA states that the moon's equatorial diameter stretches 3,476 km, while Australia's is 4,000 km. But if we consider their total land area, the moon (37.94 million square kilometers) is larger than the continent (7.69 million square kilometers).