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TIL Kareem Abdul-Jabbar accepted his role in Airplane! because the money they offered him would cover the cost of a rug he wanted.

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neEmb TIL that Victor Marchetti's 1974 work "The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence" was the first book subject to pre-publication censorship by the US government. The book was published with gaps showing where text had been excised and bold text where CIA censorship demands had been overturned by a court.
ddNj TIL of Henry Moseley, who rearranged the Periodic Table based on atomic mass and died aged only 27 in WW1. Isaac Asimov said of his death, ‘in view of what he might still have accomplished … his death might well have been the most costly single death of the War to mankind generally’.
4kpyX TIL In 2013, Seth MacFarlane, creator of Family Guy, contributed a collection of Carl Sagan's personal documents to the Library of Congress. Sagan was a source of childhood inspiration for MacFarlane, which prompted MacFarlane's involvement in the Cosmos revival in 2014 and upcoming documentary
eYAD TIL That the movie Night at the Museum was based on an acid trip one of the authors had (26:49)
XEEoX TIL: Around 200,000 people in Hong Kong eat, sleep, and clean themselves in roughly half the size of a parking spot, nicknamed Coffin Cubicles.