› added 5 years ago

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TIL the title of the movie 'October Sky' is an anagram of 'Rocket Boys', the title of the 1998 book upon which the movie is based. Universal Studios marketing people had to change the title because, according to their research, women over thirty would never see a movie titled Rocket Boys.

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l7RpG TIL of the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Cup, a trophy for the predecessor organisation to the NFL, awarded just once in 1920 before being lost. A replacement trophy was commissioned 13 years later, before also disappearing after 1967.
Egrvw TIL After a Japanese balloon bomb knocked out power to the Manhattan Project's Hanford nuclear site in WW2 the plan for stopping the next balloon was to fly up in a plane and throw bricks at it.
LknMV TIL that in 1977, the FBI started to build a tunnel under the Soviet Embassy in Washington D.C to eavesdrop on the Soviets; the construction took years, was riddled with complications, and worse yet - the Soviets knew about the tunnel because of a tip-off
9Yn7Q TIL as homage and in-joke, Quentin Tarantino named Mike Myers character from Inglourious Basterds "General Ed Feneche" to honor 1970s era Italian scream queen and sex symbol Edwige Fenech.
emLD TIL a prototype testing platform has been built by Chinese scientists for a magnetic levitation train that could travel up to 2900 km/h and take you from Paris to Moscow in just 1 hour.