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TIL: Along with LOTR, Sean Connery also turned down the role of Morpheus in The Matrix because he didn’t understand the script. Seeing his mistakes, he made League of Extraordinary Gentleman... despite not understanding the script.

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ebQJ TIL that the American gangster John Dillinger escaped from jail with a wooden pistol. After whittling it in his cell, in March 1934 he used the fake weapon to intimidate 33 people before getting a real machine gun. “Ha, ha, ha! And I did all this with a wooden gun!” he bragged while leaving.
d8pME TIL Dymphna, patron saint of mental illness, fled from her "mad king" father to Geel, Belgium. She founded an sanctuary for the mentally ill. After her death, the afflicted continued to flock to Geel. Citizens began boarding and caring for them in their homes, a tradition that continues today.
wb5W TIL of Zimmerit, a putty-like coating containing sawdust which some German tanks in WWII were covered with in order to prevent magnetic mines from sticking to them.
bwr9 TIL there was an unwritten law in the circus world that giants should never allow themselves to be measured. Every circus could then maintain that they had the world’s tallest man and no one could prove otherwise.
78rb7 Today I learned that the world record for longest handshake is 43 hours and 35 minutes