› added 11 months ago

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TIL fruit flies were the first living & "sentient" organism sent into space by humans.

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Lka4Q TIL The animatronic Gremlins in the 1984 movie were originally going to be played by monkeys, but that plan was abandoned after the test monkey panicked when wearing a Gremlin head.
VBOYm TIL between 1999 and 2014 the British Post Office, due to an accounting software glitch, criminally prosecuted 736 people who ran post office branches for theft and false accounting. With many left bankrupt or in prison, despite the Post Office becoming aware of a fault in the system in 2010.
b9Ox7 TIL about the Banana Massacre of 1928, where the US threatened Colombia with military invasion if it didn't end the ongoing Chiquita workers' strike. The Colombian army fired on unarmed protesters, men, women, and children, killing somewhere between 800 and 3,000.
BrMb TIL A drug called DCA has been shown to work in a small clinical trial on brain cancer patients. Drug companies won’t invest in it as it is unpatentable and therefore unprofitable. Entrepreneurs banned from selling it in the US
VGYQ TIL when Mel Brooks hired Orson Welles to narrate History of the World pt.1, he budgeted $5,000 a day for 5 days. Welles completed all the narration perfectly by noon on the first day, making $25,000 for 3 hours work. He said he planned to spend the money on Cuban cigars and caviar.