› added 9 years ago

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TIL that George Lucas was so sure that Close Encounters of the Third Kind would out perform Star Wars at the box office that he proposed to Steven Spielberg that they trade 2.5% of the profit on each other’s films. To this day Spielberg receives 2.5% of the profits from Star Wars.

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mxNPo TIL the loudest animal on the planet is the Sperm whale that can click at 236 db, some people believe they can communicate with other whales half way around the world.
ZpgrR TIL in 1959 a white man from Texas disguised himself as a black man and traveled for six weeks on greyhound buses. After publishing his experiences with racism he was forced to move to Mexico for several years due to death threats.
pYJDe TIL when married couple Caleb Roesler and Justine Roesler won the North American Wife Carrying Championship in 2023, they were awarded Justine's weight in beer and given $5 for every pound she weighed.
e0ZL6 TIL a Russian lab housing biological weapons and pathogens accidentally released a deadly anthrax strain in 1979, killing an unknown number of people. The lab is still active.
85w8 TIL that when Joseph Heller was asked why he hadn’t ever written anything as good as Catch-22 since, his reply was that neither has anyone else.