› added 6 years ago

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TIL that Nicholas Cage spent $150 million on a 70-million-year-old dinosaur skull, a tomb, a $150,000 first edition Superman comic, pygmy heads, two European castles; one worth $10 million and the other $2.6 million, and 15 residences. He later had to return the skull to the Mongolian govt.

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b9YWZ TIL the reason why NASA (and later the Russians) use a specialised space pen instead of pencil in space is because the graphite of pencils is conductive and can cause short circuits and even fires. The pens have been used since the Apollo era and are still being used right now on the ISS.
0wrRv TIL Half of European men share King Tut's DNA (haplogroup R1b1a2) as opposed to less than 1% of modern Egyptians. Its suggested that the common ancestor lived in the Caucasus about 9,500 years ago.
awl8M TIL of John Ruffo, a fugitive who in 1998 was convicted of a scheme to defraud US and foreign banking institutions of 350 million dollars. He was last sighted in 2001, visiting community banks trying to open an account so he could receive $250 million of wire transfers from Nigeria.
W7Z5B TIL Mansfield Smith-Cumming, inspiration for James Bond's "M," was involved in discovering cum worked as an invisible ink during WW1. Agents adopted the motto "Every man his own stylo". However, the use of semen as invisible ink was ceased because of the smell it produced for the eventual receiver.
5Qlr TIL that Vlad the Impaler stopped payment of tributes to the Turks. Turkish ambassadors went to Vlad, demanding immediate payment. Vlad, hearing that they were not prepared to remove their turbans as a mark of respect while in his presence, had the turbans nailed to their heads.