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TIL treadmills were originally a punishment used to harness human power on a giant wheel used to grind grains; hence the name “treadmill.”

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VWRm TIL an eerie prophecy attributed to Nostradamus regarding the 9/11 attacks was in fact fabricated by a college student in 1997 in an effort to show how easily such prophecies can be misused.
j68La TIL after viewing a rough cut of Romancing the Stone & expecting it to flop, the producers of the then-under-development Cocoon fired Robert Zemeckis as their film's director. But RtS was a surprise hit as the 6th-highest-grossing film of 1984 ($115 m) & allowed Zemeckis to make Back to the Future.
e7Zk TIL that the events in DIE HARD were originally supposed to take place over three days but a Shakespeare play convinced them to do it in one night
R70Al TIL Bags of chips aren't filled with oxygen, but are filled with nitrogen. Oxygen would turn the chips rancid while nitrogen preserves the freshness of the chips, prevents combustion, and creates sufficient cushioning during the shipping process.
MpMK TIL In 1942 The Japanese (led by Gen. Imamura) fed 200 American POW’s to the sharks off Java Island in what became known as the Pig Basket Atrocities