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TIL nobody wanted to cast Arnold Schwarzenegger in a comedy. So he, along with Danny Devito & director Ivan Reitman, worked out a deal for Twins (1988) where they took no money upfront & got 40% of the backend collectively instead. He ended up earning over $40m, the most he ever made from a movie.

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M8OK TIL that when the Nazi Party held its first book burnings, one of the works destroyed was an 1821 play by Heinrich Heine containing the famous phrase “Where they burn books, they will also in the end burn people.”
E8Zd TIL the kids television show Arthur did a parody of South Park during an episode.
XkNR TIL China had what is believed to be the first libertarian intellectual, Lao-tzu. He was a personal acquaintance of Confucius and believed government’s primary function was “inaction.”
AN09n TIL In 1971, the Finnish Broadcasting Company built a TV-mast in Espoo, which unintentionally transmitted Finnish shows to viewers in Soviet Estonia. Despite efforts to jam the signals by the Soviets, Finnish broadcasts drew larger audiences in northern Estonia than Soviet Central Television did.
VMMbD TIL there are more tigers living in captivity in the US (at least ~5000, likely much more) than there are living in the wild globally (~3200). Of those ~5000, only ~6% live in zoos and accredited facilities. The rest are privately owned, many living in residential backyards.