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TIL the song "Life Is A Highway" was inspired by a trip songwriter Tom Cochrane took to Africa on behalf of the World Vision famine relief organization. Cochrane said later "[The song] became a pep talk to myself... saying you can’t really control all of this stuff, you just do the best you can."

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ANoWl TIL the six Tongan castaways were able to keep a fire burning continuously for more than 12 of the 15 months they spent marooned on a deserted island in 1965 after one of the boys named Stephen (who would go on to become an engineer), had managed to use two sticks to start one.
wDDE TIL For ‘Wayne’s World’ Mike Myers demanded to use the song 'Bohemian Rhapsody’ in the car scene instead of a Guns n’ Roses song, even threatening to quit the production if they didn’t use it.
8aMpX TIL the parents of 17-year-old Jesse Shipley who had died in a car crash only learned that authorities had kept his brain when his classmates went on a field trip to a morgue and saw a jar labeled Jesse Shipley that had a brain in it.
neZJ7 TIL that Edgar Allan Poe is considered one of the founders of the Detective Genre. He created one of the first detectives who solves mysteries based on the facts of the crime. He is credited with inventing the “least likely suspect” trope, as well as the culprit framing another by planting evidence
N7yEM TIL despite the huge size of whales, their pupils are only about 50% larger than those of humans. However, this still means they can hypothetically see stars about one magnitude fainter than we can, revealing 2.5 times more stars. Giant deep-sea squids have pupils some 10 times wider than whales.