› added 5 years ago

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TIL that in the original book for 101 Dalmatians, Pongo's wife was not Perdita but a dog called Missis; Perdita was a stray that was rescued by Pongo's master after she ran away when her pups were sold by her cruel owners to Cruella de Vil. It's in her name; Perdita means "Lost".

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D1D4Y TIL a woman named Penny Ann Early played in a game in the ABA, the NBA's rival league that they eventually merged with in 1976.
QN8X6 TIL the 1959 Epic Movie "Ben-Hur" was such a huge box office hit that it generated another $20 million from merchandising, including books, toys, candy, perfume, neckties, jewelry, gowns, chariot-shaped tricycles, and "Ben-Her" and "Ben-His" bathroom towels.
dDpRd TIL the BBC received over 47,000 complaints about its plans to screen "Jerry Springer: The Opera" in 2005. It was the most complaints ever received about a British television broadcast, and was attributed to an orchestrated campaign by Christian groups
Oo4DX TIL that Bill Gates' mother, Mary, knew John Opel, CEO of IBM, because both served on the national United Way committee. At Mary's request, Opel set up a meeting with Bill Gates, CEO of then-small software firm Microsoft, to discuss the possibility of using PC-DOS for IBM's about-to-be-released PC.
jNjXj RemoveDebris, a small experimental satellite designed to clean up space debris successfully snared its first piece of extraterrestrial pollution — a solar system premiere. Did you know that more than 7,600 tonnes of so-called "space junk" floats around Earth — the result of nearly 60 years of space exploration — with some moving faster than a speeding bullet at approximately 48,000 kilometres per hour (30,000 miles per hour).