› added 5 years ago

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TIL that Léo Taxil, the journalist that "exposed" Freemasons as Satanists, admitted that it was an elaborate hoax over 12 years later. He once said, "I thought everybody would see the joke and give me credit for originating a new line of humor, but my readers wouldn't have it so."

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oQWR TIL that before he ever wrote a feature film, Mel Brooks made an animated short where he improvised the voice of an old Jewish man forced to sit through an art house film. That short was called The Critic and it won him an Oscar.
l5l1 TIL that sea stars (starfish) are actually top predators feared by everything else in their habitat. Removing them causes widespread effects throughout the ecosystem, just like removing wolves from the forest or lions from the savannah.
4X815 TIL Director Andrei Tarkovsky’s cancer may have been caused by prolonged filming near a chemical plant for the film Stalker (1979)
enJ6 TIL: The land with private homes the Supreme Court allowed a city council to “condemn” and sell to a private developer is now an empty lot because the developer couldn’t raise the money to develop the land.
Yp71G TIL that a river in New Zealand has been given legal status as a living entity and possesses the same rights as a human being.