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TIL Dame Helen Mirren's performance as the Queen in the 2006 movie was so convincing that by the end crew members who had been used to slouching while speaking to her were standing straight up, curtsying, and politely folding their hands behind their back, just like addressing the real monarch.

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XbwR TIL that talking drums were used in Africa for centuries to transmit messages over long distances by mimicking speech. When these were brought to America during the slave trade, they were banned because slaves used them to transmit messages their masters couldn’t decipher.
X0GZr TIL the sky looks blue because gases and particles in the air scatter light from the sun and shorter blue wavelength light is scattered more than other wavelengths, so we see more of the blue than other colors. Sunsets are more atmosphere scattering most of the blue so you see more reds and yellows
16KXr TIL The Godfather almost didn’t get made because Paramount didn’t believe in it, and the director nearly got fired before the studio saw the rough cut. It went on to become one of the most iconic films of all time.
MeOW0 TIL the gender-neutral “they” was used as the 3rd person singular in English until about 1800, when “he” and “she” became widespread to make English more like Latin
R7nLw TIL that despite taking around 10 years to gain enough energy to bloom, during a period of 2016, dozens of Amorphophallus Titanum plants all bloomed within a few weeks of one another.