› added 8 years ago

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TIL learned that studio execs balked when Jim Carrey asked for $400,000 for Dumb and Dumber. Then Ace Ventura: Pet Detective came out and the studio had to pay Carrey $7 million to do the movie!

ep6WE TIL Caravaggio, pioneer of baroque art, had an extensive criminal record, most of it related to brawls and physical assault. He went on the run after being sentenced to beheading for murder, at which point his paintings repeatedly feautured severed heads, often his own
9Yjgp TIL that the Venus flytrap naturally grows in very few areas in the Carolinas, so park rangers have to keep most of their grow sites a secret to keep them safe from poachers.
wL8Zo TIL: The founder of the Smithsonian never visited the United States. But in 1901, when his grave in Italy was to be relocated to make room for a quarry, Alexander Graham Bell, a Smithsonian regent, proposed moving his remains to the Smithsonian. So the museum ended up collecting its founders remains
Me1BK TIL Marie Antoinette (1793) accidentally stepped on her executioner's shoe. Her last words were "Pardonnez-moi, monsieur. Je ne l’ai pas fait exprès" (Pardon me, sir, I did not do it on purpose). Marie Tussaud used her head to create a death mask.
a8Po TIL During the filming of a scene in the movie Leon: The Professional involving all of the police cars on the street, a man ran from a store he had just robbed. When he encountered the movie set by accident, he saw all of the “police” and gave himself up to a bunch of uniformed extras.