› added 10 months ago

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TIL that, when writing Dracula, Bram Stoker was greatly influenced by his father’s interest in theatre and his mother’s gruesome stories about her childhood during the cholera epidemic in 1832.

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pY81G TIL that macOS and iOS are both based on FreeBSD.
Z9QB TIL that Icelanders have no family names. Instead, their surname is just their father’s name plus “son” or “dottir”
4bgb TIL that earwax plugs from whales can be used to determine their age, much like tree rings. In 2013 a study examined a foot-long earwax plug from a blue whale to also determine when it was exposed to certain chemicals in the environment.
Maem TIL Danny Elfman came up with the theme to ‘Batman’ on a flight from London but since he couldn’t write music he kept running to the bathroom to record himself on a tape recorder whenever he had a new idea, causing the flight attendants to think he was a junkie
Br40L TIL: In the 1950s, if a woman wanted to know if she was pregnant, she needed to get her urine injected into a frog to see if it would lay eggs. This was a mainstream method and thousands of frogs were exported around the world.