› added 7 years ago

127

TIL Stephen King threw away the first few pages of Carrie until his wife fished it out of the trash can and said she liked it and would help him with the female perspective. The book would become his first published novel and wildly successful, launching his $400 million career.

epn4k TIL that in 1944 a Sci-fi writer wrote a short story describing nuclear bombs and their construction methods called "Deadline". It was so accurate that the Counter intelligence Corps feared a leak or spy on the Manhattan Project. In actuality the info was always there in public scientific journals.
XE6WP TIL In 1984 water beds were a $2 billion business with 3.4 million sold in the United States alone. At the time, 75 percent of all stores that sold water beds also offered a selection of water bed cribs.
k7Xd TIL that Benjamin Franklin tried to convince the Royal Academy of Brussels “To discover some Drug…that shall render the natural Discharges of Wind from our Bodies, not only inoffensive, but as agreeable as Perfumes.”
0OdL TIL that a green card for an entire family can be purchased from the US Government for $1 million. Anyone who invests $1 million and creates at least 10 permanent jobs, or invests $500,000 in a targeted area is automatically entitled to permanent residence, for them and their family.
BrxDd TIL that 97% of the galaxies in our observable Universe are permanently unreachable by humans. The Universe is expanding so rapidly that even if humans left earth today, travelling at the speed of light, they could only ever reach about 3% of the total number of galaxies in our observable Universe.