› added 12 years ago

92

TIL that when Donald Sutherland was cast in Animal House, he was offered either a 40k upfront payment, or a percentage of the film. Thinking that the film wouldn’t be a success, he took the 40k. Had he taken even just 1% of the film’s revenue, he would have made $1,416,000.

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XEpgk TIL: Birds have a poor sense of smell so handling a young bird does not cause its parents to abandon it. If you move it, make sure you leave it within hearing distance of where it was found.
Z8m4Y TIL about the Battle of Saragarhi, in which 21 Sikh soldiers of the 36th Sikh Regiment were stationed at an army post and were attacked by 10,000 to 12,000 Afghans. The Sikhs chose to fight to the death, in what is considered by some military historians as one of history's greatest last stands.
nWkL7 TIL about the UNESCO Memory of the World Programme, which seeks to preserve the "documentary heritage" of humanity. Included are archives for: cuneiform tablets, the Battle of the Somme, records of smallpox eradication, Beethoven's Ninth, and so much more.
QJyop TIL why we have two nostrils - different smells are detectable at different air speeds, so one nostril is always more open than the other to give us a wider olfactory range.
LkAEV TIL in 1981 Dean Koontz wrote a book "The Eyes of Darkness". The chapter 39 it mentions a Chinese military lab outside of the city of Wuhan, where a deadly virus is invented as part of the country's biological weapons warfare programme. Owing to the lab's location, the virus is named 'Wuhan-400'.