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TIL the book on which the movie "The Exorcist" is based was initially a failure. The author lucked out when he was invited as a last-minute guest on late night show, The Dick Cavett Show. Subsequently, the book hit The New York Times best-seller list and was picked up by Warner Bros for the movie.

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LkywP TIL that a billionaire hedge fund manager once paid Kenny Rogers $4 Million to sing The Gambler over and over a dozen times at his birthday party.
XErb6 TIL that Léo Taxil, the journalist that "exposed" Freemasons as Satanists, admitted that it was an elaborate hoax over 12 years later. He once said, "I thought everybody would see the joke and give me credit for originating a new line of humor, but my readers wouldn't have it so."
oRlY8 TIL that Devin Gaines earned five bachelor's degrees with honors simultaneously at the University of Connecticut, averaging 24 credits per semester and three hours of sleep per night. Tragically, he drowned in 2007 due to a lack of swimming skills.
4X7bb TIL author Clive Barker supported himself early in his career by occasionally working as a male prostitute for rich and secretive clients. The experience inspired him to write, "The Hellbound Heart", which was later adapted into the film, "Hellraiser"
p8Yde It's not that they can't. They just don't need to, says Mike Murray, a veterinarian at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California. Birds have the anatomical and physical ability to pass gas, he explains, "but if I saw gas in a bird's gastrointestinal tract on an x-ray, I'd suspect that something abnormal was going on in there."