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TIL: Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory was financed by the Quaker Oats company to sell their real-life Wonka Bar. The bar was taken off shelves after a few months due to problems with its formula, but the film went on to become a cult classic.

VBmDm TIL that The Dead Zone, in which Christopher Walken, the clairvoyant protagonist, attempts and fails to assassinate a presidential candidate with a rifle at a campaign rally, was written by Stephen King.
4Xm9R TIL that Buzz Lightyear was originally conceived as a "Dudley Do-Right" kind of character: dim-witted but cheerful and self-aware. He was then re-envisioned as an action figure who isn’t aware that he’s a toy, and who therefore takes his job as an Intergalactic Space Ranger quite seriously.
WDE8 TIL that Japanese Buddhists would self-sacrifice by sealing themselves inside a ship boarded-up like a coffin. At sea they either pulled a wooden plug from the hull and drowned or died of thirst or starvation.
DGND TIL a mason in 1700’s Jerusalem left his wooden ladder behind after doing some work on a church and now it can’t be moved without the agreement and permission of six different Christian leaders.
YyJA TIL The sun will never set on the present-day British Empire, due to the smallest and most isolated of the 14 territories, the Pitcairn Islands, which only has a population of a few dozen people. Until there is an eclipse there, Britain remains the empire on which the sun never sets.