› added 5 years ago

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TIL that Peter Butterworth (1915-1979), a British comedy actor, failed his audition for the 1950 movie The Wooden Horse because he "didn't look convincingly heroic or athletic enough". However, he was a POW in Stalag Luft III and actually helped in the real escape that the film/book was based on.

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R5Wga TIL that in 1961, surgeon Leonid Rogozov operated on himself for appendicitis. With local anesthesia, a mirror and the help of his colleagues, he managed to remove his appendix.
dBY7 Today I learned that James Earl Jones and Madge Sinclair, who portrayed the King & Queen of Zamunda in Coming to America, also provided the voices of Simba’s parents Mufasa & Sarabi in The Lion King
lOvN TIL that NFL legend Walter Payton originally didn’t want to play high school football, because his brother played and he didn’t want to compete with him. He only agreed to try out after receiving assurances that he wouldn’t have to quit the marching band, where he was an accomplished drummer
yVvlv TIL that many scenes in the movie My Left Foot (a story about a man who could control only his left foot) were filmed through a mirror, because Daniel Daniel-Lewis could only use his right foot to perform the actions in the film.
MedEb TIL: The Trakehner breed of Prussian horses survived WW2 because an estate owner (Colonel Alexander zu Dohna-Schlobitten) escaped the Russian advance with 31 brood mares. He was home after being cashiered from the Wehrmacht for refusing to execute 15 captured American soldiers in Italy.