› added 6 years ago

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TIL John Steinbeck’s dog, Toby, ate his manuscript of Of Mice and Men. There was no other draft. Steinbeck said of the incident, “I was pretty mad but the poor little fellow may have been acting critically. I didn’t want to ruin a good dog for a ms (manuscript), I’m not sure is good at all.”

rMO4 TIL of Demi-Lee Brennan, the first liver transplant patient to switch blood groups - at estimated odds of 6 billion to 1. The switch in blood type means the 15-year-old no longer requires life-long consumption of immunosuppressant drugs which are used to stop the body from rejecting a new organ.
MeVp7 TIL The mouses cursor is tilted because in the early days it was first a vertical arrow pointing up, but it was difficult to see a vertical line on a low res screen, so it was tilted to make it easier to find
BrGAe TIL North Korean Kim Jong Il leader visited Pudong, the hotbed of China's information industry, saying he wanted to gain and to learn from China. Chinese President Jiang Zemin also travelled to Pyongyang for three days to build friendship with North Korea
pyA4 TIL: Shell launched the biggest vessel ever put to sea in 2013. The Prelude FLNG platform is longer than Sears Tower is tall, costs ~$12 billion, will weigh 600,000 tonnes (5 times as much as an aircraft carrier) and withstand category 5 cyclones.
XEQlP TIL when Sean Lennon, the son of John, was little, he didn't know about The Beatles because his parents never played Beatles records at home. When Sean saw Yellow Submarine at his friend's house, his dad had to explain why there was a cartoon version of him in the movie.