› added 8 years ago

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TIL the Secret Service agent that saved President Reagan’s life became a Secret Service agent after seeing a movie starring Ronald Reagan as a Secret Service Agent

YpPYP TIL William Goldman, writer of 'The Princess Bride', wrote the screenplay for his two daughters, who were 7 and 4 at the time. He asked them what they wanted to be in the story, with one saying a princess and one being a bride. He told them "That'll be the title."
l76jA TIL that William Shatner interviewed several of his fellow cast members, for his book Star Trek Memories. Shatner was taken aback to discover the negative memories some of them from working with him and James Doohan refused to meet Shatner at all.
eAOL TIL the heat a spacecraft faces on reentry isn’t generated by simple friction but rather by ram pressure - the fast-moving shuttle compresses the air in front of it, forming a massive shock zone in which air molecules ionize and break apart.
4XYK5 TIL that in England prior to the mid-17th Century, Christmas was a twelve-day festival, and included the burning of the Yule log and playing traditional games. The Comwellian Revolt abolished Christmas, and the Industrial Revolution eroded the customs in communities which tried to hold onto them.
K9DR TIL that George Lucas and Steven Spielberg worried that the Sharptooth fight and death of Littlefoot’s mother in The Land Before Time would be too frightening or even psychologically-damaging to young children, so they consulted psychologists to examine the scenes.