› added 12 years ago

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TIL that Guy Ritchie challenged Jason Statham to impersonate an illegal street vendor and convince him to purchase fake jewelry as an audition for what would be Statham’s debut in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998).

epwrE TIL about Thomas Salme, a Swedish airplane mechanic with no flying experience, using fake credentials flew 13 years for several international airlines with his only source of training being an early version of Flight Simulator.
77vb TIL of Giorgio Perlasca. A meat importer from Padua, Italy. He posed as a Spanish diplomat in Nazi-controlled Hungary in 1944, saving over 5,000 Jews from deportation to the gas chambers. One memorable act saw him stare down Adolph Eichmann who wanted to remove two 12-year-old Jewish children.
0YY1 TIL that Elon Musk believes that the United States is “[inarguably] the greatest country that has ever existed on Earth”, describing it as “the greatest force for good of any country that’s ever been” and believes outright that there “would not be democracy in the world if not for the United States”
awdB0 TIL: That China has a lower gdp per capita than Russia, Greece and Mexico
D1Bbj TIL 'Infinite Monkey Theorem' was tested using real monkeys. Monkeys typed nothing but pages consisting mainly of the letter 'S.' The lead male began typing by bashing the keyboard with a stone while other monkeys urinated and defecated on it. They concluded that monkeys are not "random generators"