› added 10 years ago

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TIL that Gordon Ramsay challenged James May from Top Gear to eat three delicacies as a “test of a man.” The third delicacy was rotten shark, which Ramsay spat out, while May finished and responded, “You disappoint me, Ramsay.”

b9Dr7 TIL that Abraham Lincoln was almost in a saber duel with James Shield on September 22, 1842 until John J. Hardin and Dr. R.W. English ceased the hostilities between the two.
j68La TIL after viewing a rough cut of Romancing the Stone & expecting it to flop, the producers of the then-under-development Cocoon fired Robert Zemeckis as their film's director. But RtS was a surprise hit as the 6th-highest-grossing film of 1984 ($115 m) & allowed Zemeckis to make Back to the Future.
D1LED TIL that the confusing and maze-like layouts of stores like IKEA is called "The Gruen Transfer", and is meant to force shoppers to see more merchandise than they planned. It is named after mall architest Victor Gruen, who actually hated such manipulative techniques.
gMAbD TIL Bong Joon Ho clashed with Harvey Weinstein over cuts in his movie "Snowpiercer." Weinstein wanted to take out a fish gutting scene. "Why fish? We need action!" he said. Bong told him his father was a fisherman & it was a tribute to him, so he let him keep the scene. Boon later admitted he lied.
rNlZo TIL the Avianca airplane crash of 1990 was caused in part due to the pilots not declaring a fuel emergency to the aircraft controllers. They never actually use the word "emergency," so they flew around in holding patterns and eventually ran out of fuel