› added 12 years ago

68

TIL the world’s largest primates stood 10 feet tall and may have coexisted with humans before going extinct

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69Wvm TIL Anne Rice author of Interview with the Vampire wanted English actor Julian Sands to play the role of Lestat and was disappointed with the studio's pick of a better known Tom Cruise. She unsucessfully proposed alternate picks. Despite this rice was subsequently pleased with Cruise's performance
yV778 TIL that VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet program, was also the first "killer app" (a program that makes people buy a computer just to run the software). VisiCalc was so revolutionary, and so powerful, that people bought the $2000 Apple II (the only computer it ran on) to run the $100 application.
VMwVD TIL that LSD causes the regions in the brain involved in introspection and the regions involved in sensory perception of the outside world to communicate with each other more intensely than usual, which is why people tend to feel a sense of oneness with the universe while under its influence.
KZ99 TIL “Stayin’ Alive” by Bee Gees was used in a study to train medical staff to perform CPR. The song has close to 104 beats per minute, and 100-120 chest compressions per minute are recommended by the British Heart Foundation.
Zoko TIL the CEO of a credit card company took a pay cut in order to raise the wages of his staff to $70,000 per year, even for the lowest-paid clerk; the average salary of the 120 person staff had been $48K per year.