› added 9 years ago

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TIL that in 1924, when Standard Oil was researching tetraethyl lead as a gasoline additive, 32 of 49 workers had to be hospitalized due to lead poisoning, and 5 of them died. A federal panel made entirely of industry scientists later concluded that there “no danger” from tetraethyl lead.

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6E4DW TIL the street Fighter movie had: spent 22% of the budget casting Jean-Claude Van Damme, a script written in one night, Kylie Minogue shoehorned in as Cammy by the Australian Actors' Guild, M. Bison with terminal cancer; which caused rushed fight training sometimes just hours before a scene was shot
780OZ TIL that in 2017, an Ohio Sheriff's office auctioned off an M1921 Thompson submachine gun, that they originally owned. The starting bid was 40k USD, and the Thompson was eventually sold for 90k USD. The Sherriff's office originally purchased the weapon on May 13th 1934.
GYWbg TIL that James Franco went back to college after filming Spider-Man 3. After taking 62 credits per quarter, he graduated from UCLA in 2 years; he then went on to attend Brooklyn College's, Columbia University's, and NYU's MFA programs. Afterwards he attended Yale to get his Ph.D in English.
5Vx8Q TIL the term leap year probably comes from the fact that a fixed date in the Gregorian calendar normally advances one day of the week from one year to the next, but the day of the week in the 12 months following the leap day will advance two days due to the extra day, thus leaping over one day.
Wk6VB TIL Frankie Muniz suffers from long term memory loss and doesn't even remember being on Malcolm in the Middle.