› added 1 year ago

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TIL that Alien was based on a comedy film written by its screenwriter Dan O'Bannon called Dark Star, featuring an alien that was just a painted beach ball with rubber claws attached. He eventually started imagining what Dark Star would look like as a horror film.

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5VMLR TIL about the RNA world hypothesis, according to which the many key roles of RNA in protein synthesis, such as the ribozyme nature of the peptidyl transferase activity of the ribosome, suggest that RNA evolved as an informational biopolymer before proteins and even before DNA.
4kgXo TIL about the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923, a failed coup d'état by Nazi party leader Adolf Hilter. He was tried and found guilty of treason and imprisoned which ultimately led to his rise in power.
WkYx9 TIL:Toast falling off a plate lands butter-side down almost 2/3 of the time.It’s nothing to do with one side being buttered, its that as the toast goes over the edge of the plate, it starts to rotate, but the spin-rate is too slow to bring the butter-side up again by the time it hits the floor
5Rn TIL Anton-Babinski syndrome is a rare condition in which a blind person doesn’t realize that they are blind.
YpO6P TIL that, in 1965, a radio personality in Vancouver committed to living on the top of the massive Bowmac car dealership sign until all the cars were sold. He had been poisoning his wife with arsenic for months, and the nine day gap in the poisoning would later get him convicted of her murder.