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TIL Lyndon B Johnson worked 18-20 hour days without breaks, smoked heavily, and used his knowledge of every senator's ambitions, hopes, and tastes to his advantage in securing votes. As a congressman, he was the most powerful majority leader in American history.

Eg68V TIL the original version of “Washington Crossing the Delaware,” one of the most famous paintings in American history, was destroyed by an Allied bombing raid while on display in Bremen during WWII.
yVZdp TIL that Alien was based on a comedy film written by its screenwriter Dan O'Bannon called Dark Star, featuring an alien that was just a painted beach ball with rubber claws attached. He eventually started imagining what Dark Star would look like as a horror film.
JEam TIL John Cleese turned down the role of Cogsworth in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast in order to play Cat R. Waul in Amblimation’s An American Tail: Fievel Goes West
kOyam TIL that people used to believe that mischievous sprits lived in the grains of wood, so while they were speaking about good fortune they would "knock on wood" to make noise so that the spirits couldn't hear what they were saying and cause their fortune to take a turn for the worse.
BrE9x TIL author Michael Crichton felt one of his college writing professors was unfairly grading his essays C+. In what he described as a scientific experiment, Crichton submitted an essay by George Orwell under his own name and the professor gave him a B-.