› added 12 years ago

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TIL Michael J Fox almost wasn’t casted as Alex Keaton on ‘Family Ties’ because NBC executive Brandon Tartikoff thought Fox didn’t have “the kind of face you’ll ever see on a lunch box”. Years later Fox would send Tartikoff a Marty McFly lunch box, which Tartikoff kept in his office.

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Ab9o TIL that during the 2007 baseball season, the Los Angeles Dodgers added an infielder named Chin-Lung Hu. After Hu singled in his third at-bat in a game on September 23, Dodgers announcer Vin Scully said, “Shades of Abbott and Costello, I can finally say, ‘Hu is on first base.’”
x6VN0 TIL the first ever transatlantic radio signal was received here in Canada, morse code for the letter “s”
b5PZ TIL that the TV show ‘The Golden Girls’ began as a joke. To promote 'Miami Vice’ to advertisers, NBC in 1984 put on a skit about the nonexistent 'Miami Nice’, about retirees in Florida playing cards. Network executive Warren Littlefield, watching the audience laugh, liked the idea of such a sitcom.
OoPYR TIL about Roselle, a seeing-eye dog that led her blind owner, Michael Hingson, down 1,463 steps from the 78th floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001. Dog and owner exited just before the South Tower collapsed, and both survived.
a1lZ TIL Instead of handouts, panhandlers in Albuquerque, NM are offered a job making $9/hr cash paid at end of workday for doing work for the city’s Solid Waste Dept. A 16-seat van run by a homeless shelter cruises the streets to offer jobs to panhandlers. Homeless can also call 311 to receive help.