› added 7 months ago

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TIL Fifty Shades of Grey was the highest selling book of the 2010s.

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LkMAv TIL the reason seals, whales, and other diving mammals can hold their breath for so much longer than non-diving mammals is because they have a special type of myoglobin (oxygen-biding protein) that is positively-charged, preventing disease-causing clumping (like tau in Alzheimer’s).
eWe4 TIL that Claudius was the only one of the first 15 Roman emperors not to take a male lover. Others considered him strange for only being attracted to women
gMdA9 TIL that the irregular shapes of the letters in the Comic Sans font type allows people suffering from dyslexia to read more easily. While many fonts use repeated shapes to create different letters, such as a ‘p’ rotated to made a ‘q,’ Comic Sans uses few repeated shapes, creating distinct letters.
5YBMP TIL that Eric Idle wrote a 12-line poem and a budget when formally proposing the movie “The Meaning Of Life” to the studio. It was OK’d immediately.
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.