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TIL, The Russian novel We (1920-21) by Yevgeny Zamyatin is considered one of the grandfathers of the dystopian genre and influenced George Orwell's 1984. "Zamyatin's influence on Orwell is beyond dispute...1984 shares so many features with We that there can be no doubt about its general debt to it."

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16ZgD TIL that Mark Yavorsky, the inspiration behind Werner Herzog's film "My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done," had erected a shrine to Herzog's "Aguirre, the Wrath of God." This concerned Herzog so much that the two never met again.
aQDJ TIL Stockholm, Sweden tested a “Speed Camera Lottery” where speed limit-abiding drivers were automatically entered into a drawing to win a prize pool funded out of fines paid by speeders.
16B8P TIL that 30 years after cocaine was first isolated from the coca plant, it was first tested as an anesthetic. In 1884, Austrian ophthalmologist Karl Koller instilled a 2% solution of cocaine into his own eye and tested its effectiveness by pricking his eye with a needle.
awM6N TIL the source code for 13 Atari games, including Ms. Pac-Man and Centipede, were found in a dumpster behind their office building in California
8aBAZ TIL that when NASA's New Horizons spacecraft passed by Pluto, the trip took about 1 minute less than predicted or in a decade-long journey, NASA's forecast was 99.99998% accurate or the equivalent of forecasting a trip from New York to Boston & being accurate to within four-millionths of a second.