› added 1 year ago

226

TIL: Duckie’s dance in the movie "Pretty In Pink" was originally set to The Rolling Stones’ “Start Me Up.” After a failed attempt to secure the song rights, Otis Redding’s “Try a Little Tenderness” was chosen instead, with choreographer Kenny Ortega (Dirty Dancing) teaching Jon Cryer how to dance.

Read more mentalfloss.com

via reddit.com

v1enr TIL that multiple Star Wars lead actors have struggled with a habit of making their own sound effects for fight scenes - to the point where multiple takes needed to be re-shot because you could see the actors making lightsaber noises.
W5Ko TIL In Ancient Rome, flaming war pigs were used to counter war elephants. The siege of Megara in 266 BC was broken when Megarians doused pigs in pitch, set them alight and drove them towards the enemy’s massed war elephants. The elephants bolted in terror, killing a large number of soldiers.
e0XeD TIL about the 1969 book "Naked Came the Stranger", a literary hoax - the book was written to be disjointed and terrible, but full of sex scenes, to prove that any book could succeed if enough sex was thrown in. The novel spent 13 weeks on the New York Times Best-Seller List.
wLgd8 TIL that many snails and slugs choose their mates by stabbing them in the body with hormone-covered implements called the 'love dart'
a8odL TIL: Citizens of 13th century Freiburg didn't like that the Count of Freiburg increasing taxes and limiting their freedom of trade, so they destroyed his castle with catapults.