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TIL about James Thurber, author of 'The Secret Life of Walter Mitty' was cartoonist in New Yorker who got injured on one eye in childhood and lost vision from the other eye too. But he started seeing hallucinations and it is believed, they were the source of most of his illustrations.

Read more thurberhouse.org

via reddit.com

9Yv8D TIL that in the late Middle Ages, books were so valuable that libraries would chain them to the bookcase. This was widely practised until the 18th century.
brZp TIL that George Lucas was so sure that Close Encounters of the Third Kind would out perform Star Wars at the box office that he proposed to Steven Spielberg that they trade 2.5% of the profit on each other’s films. To this day Spielberg receives 2.5% of the profits from Star Wars.
v16eD TIL Steven Spielberg was originally set to direct the "Harry Potter" film with Haley Joel Osment cast as Harry, however dropped the project due to creative differences with J.K. Rowling.
R59E8 TIL During the Napoleonic Wars French cavalry developed a technique called Sabrage, which is opening a champagne bottle with a saber. The wielder slides the saber along the body seam of the bottle to the lip to break the top of the neck away.
ANL57 TIL that in 1976, 3 men kidnapped a bus full of schoolchildren with the goal of ransoming them back for 5 million dollars. They tried to place the ransom call, but the line was busy, and they ended up falling asleep. By the time they woke up, the children had freed themselves and made it to safety.