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TIL Disney composer Alan Menken came from a family of dentists and trained at medical school. He was a poor student, "wild hippie" and barely finished NYU. 8 Oscars, 10 Grammys, 7 Golden Globes later, Menken is now a star at NYU with a doctorate and scholarship in his name

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D1bee TIL Jerry Seinfeld's association to the phrase "What's The Deal With.." was caused by an SNL sketch he was in mocking Observational Comedians that always say the phrase before a joke. Seinfeld himself rarely said the phrase in his shows and in all 180 episodes of his series he only said it 4 times.
V4Wk TIL of James Price, an 18th century chemist/alchemist who claimed to be able to turn mercury into gold. When challenged to perform the conversion for a second time in front of credible witnesses, he instead committed suicide by drinking cyanide.
v1AAD TIL of Eastern Airlines Flight 401, which crashed after the entire cockpit crew had become preoccupied with changing a lightbulb.
wEyJ TIL M. Night Shyamalan once watched Nickelodeon kid show ‘Are You Afraid Of The Dark?’, and particularly enjoyed an episode called “The Tale of the Dream Girl”, which is about a kid who can communicate with the dead. The episode would influence him to write the screenplay for The Sixth Sense.
wky6 TIL the slow loris is the world’s only venomous primate; it sucks the venom from a patch in it’s elbow before giving a lethal bite.