› added 11 years ago

86

TIL that, while working for Sports Illustrated, Kurt Vonnegut was assigned to write a piece about a race horse jumping over a fence and attempting to escape. He stared at a blank piece of paper all morning then wrote, “The horse jumped over the fucking fence,” and then left.

Read more wikipedia.org

via reddit.com

D1d8g TIL in The Shining, Stanley Kubrick intentionally isolated Shelley Duvall and argued with her often. Duvall was forced to perform the iconic and exhausting baseball bat scene 127 times. Afterwards, Duvall presented Kubrick with clumps of hair that had fallen out due to the extreme stress of filming.
EgYjx TIL actor John Lithgow’s childhood babysitter was Coretta Scott, the future future civil rights activist and wife of Martin Luther King.
pY81G TIL that macOS and iOS are both based on FreeBSD.
xeZg TIL Napoleon Bonaparte’s favorite lieutenant, Marshal Michel Ney, was granted permission at his execution to order the firing squad to fire. Ney told his men, “Wait for the order. It will be my last to you.”
4NRR TIL that the Decatur Correctional Center in Decatur, IL, allows incarcerated women to keep their babies with them in prison for up to two years. The mothers have a 0% recidivism rate compared to the statewide average of 51.3%.