› added 3 years ago

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TIL George Lucas's first choice for a puppeteer to operate and voice Yoda, was not Frank Oz, but Jim Henson.

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M7roV TIL of the Wilhelm scream. The Wilhelm scream is a stock sound effect that has been used in a number of films and TV series, beginning in 1951 with the film Distant Drums. The scream is usually used when someone is shot, falls from a great height, or is thrown from an explosion.
8DaP TIL in 1958, Mao Zedong ordered the Chinese people to kill all the sparrows in the country to protect the rice crops. The effort backfired as, without the sparrows to eat insects, the locust population exploded and wiped out food crops, contributing to the starvation of tens of millions of people.
oBd4A TIL that Columbus, ship aground on the shores of Jamaica, told the natives that if they didn't give him more supplies, God would eat the moon. He knew an eclipse was coming. It worked.
Wk5m9 TIL of the Casio VL-1, which combines a keyboard, a synthesiser, and a calculator. Despite its cheap and unorthodox construction, it became popular among musicians across many genres, from the German band Trio in their 1982 song "Da da da" to C418 in the Minecraft OST.
PZmZ TIL there’s a guy up Hitler’s/Stalin’s/Mao’s alley nobody ever talks about that killed 10 million people (Leopold the 2nd of Belgium)