› added 8 years ago

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TIL Sean Connery was offered the role of Gandalf in the Lord of The Rings trilogy. He was offered 15% of worldwide box-office receipts, totaling close to $400 million. He turned it down due to “not understanding the script”.

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7r15Z TIL performance artists Teching Hsieh & Linda Montano spent one year tied to each other at the waist with an 8-foot-long rope. They had to stay in the same room while indoors (including at Montano's teaching job); and they were not allowed to touch each other until the end of the one-year period.
6wBl TIL a New Zealand teen set a friend on fire as a prank. In his defense he stated “If he’d stopped, dropped and rolled, it would have just been a joke instead of a serious incident.”
o4go TIL in one Japanese Shingon Buddhist sect, the Tachikawa school, “the master drops the sacramental bodhicitta into the pupil’s mouth". Bodhicitta is the semen ejaculated during the master’s union with a female ritual partner.
kOwWe TIL: The Beatles song Blackbird was written in the civil rights era directly to encourage black girls as they integrated Little Rock schools. In Britain a bird is slang for girl. Interview with McCartney himself clearly stating this is attached. 16:34 in the video.
rRRvw It would burn a hole through you—and then some.