› added 8 years ago

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TIL: During the Third Reich, there was a programme called Lebensborn, where ‘racially pure’ women slept with SS officers in the hopes of producing Aryan children. An estimated 20,000 children were born during 12 years.

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8aVWG TIL that part of what makes The Exorcist so scary are the sound effects, which are meant to trigger primal fear in the viewer. The designer used animal sounds throughout the film, including a swarm of bees.
epV64 TIL That, shortly after the Berlin Wall fell, Eugene Stoner, inventor of the AR-15, and Mikhail Kalashnikov, inventor of the AK-47, met near Washington DC and developed a friendship that lasted until Stoner's death seven years later.
v1Rpr TIL that after Beethoven went deaf, he found he could affix a metal rod to his piano and bite down on it while he played, enabling him to hear perfectly through vibrations in his jawbone. The process is called bone conduction.
b6MxZ TIL of Robinson Risner, who, during the Korean war, has used his own plane to intercept a friendly running out of fuel & hydraulic oil after taking damage and used the plane through a careful collission to push/lift his comrade's into safety
lRKV TIL Jim Carey was so terrible at basketball during the filming of Cable Guy that he could barely dribble, so he mimed basketball actions and a ball was added in post production.