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TIL Gladiators carried out product endorsements in the arena. Ridley Scott left this tidbit out of the movie “Gladiator” for fear that this would seem anachronistic.

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GAPM1 TIL Jeff Koons' studio resembles an art factory. He doesn't do the sculpting or much of the painting in his artwork. It's his ideas & standards but artisans do the labor. In 2019, his stainless steel inflatable rabbit resold for $91 million; highest ever paid at auction for a work by a living artist
JYP5l TIL Mars Attacks originally had trouble attracting A list actors because most of the characters either die in some cartoonish manner or end up disfigured. That was until Jack Nicholson enthusiastically joined the film. Glenn Close, Pierce Brosnan, Danny DeVito, Michael J Fox and others followed suit
jNMGQ TIL in 1981 members of a U.S. nuclear semiotics team believed if the world ended, survivors 10,000 years in the future might not know what the radiation symbol means. So they proposed breeding bioluminescent cats that would glow when they came near radiation to serve as living indicators of danger.
rNMDM TIL that Thalidomide (morning sickness drug that caused birth defects) is a chiral molecule. The drug that was marketed was a 50/50 mixture of left and right-handed molecules. While the left-handed molecule was EFFECTIVE, the right-handed one was highly TOXIC
QJ6Q6 TIL in 1991, comic book writer Fabian Nicieza released a series called NFL SuperPro, starring an ex-NFL player superhero, with the main villain being an assassin called Instant Replay. Nicieza later revealed that his sole motivation for writing the series was getting free New York Jets tickets