› added 6 years ago

356

TIL The vanilla orchid blooms for one day in a year and the flower is only fertile for 8-12 hours. Each flower must be pollinated by hand within that 12-hour window. Unsurprisingly vanilla is nearly as expensive as silver

Read more bbc.co.uk

via reddit.com

verj TIL David Hayter, voice for solid snake in metal gear solid series, wrote the screenplay for the X-Men and X-Men 2 films.
rlMw TIL Gervais aborted his series “Ricky Gervais Meets…” after being put off by the 3rd interviewee, Gary Shandling. The premise was for Gervais to do unscripted interviews with comedians who influenced him. Shandling, vocalising the fact he finds Gervais and his comedy offensive makes things awkward.
jNwBp TIL Danny DeVito used to be a beautician. He went to New York to learn makeup but the lady he sought after to teach him only accepted students from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. So he enrolled for a semester and that's how he got into acting.
w8QP TIL that John Candy was so beloved that when his funeral procession headed to the cemetery on the 405 freeway, the LAPD decided to station officers at on-ramps to hold all traffic. The only other times this happened was for presidential motorcades or when the Pope visited Los Angeles.
QJQl9 TIL when Robert Goddard, pioneer of American rocket propulsion, proposed the concept of a moon mission in 1920, the New York Times published an editorial explaining a rocket in space could not work because there would be no air for the exhaust to push against.