TIL in the year 2000, UK TV viewers deemed the words ‘fuck’ and 'wanker’ more offensive than the words 'nigger’ and 'paki’. (Page 52).
TIL while filming a scene in the live action "Jungle Book" where Mowgli meets King Louie (Christopher Walken), director Jon Favreau spotted a cowbell on stage and said, "this is what Mowgli has to use." Mowgli rings the bell to awaken Louie as an hommage to Walken's SNL skit.
TIL on March 9-10, 1945, 300 B29 bombers dropped nearly 500,000 cylinders of napalm and petroleum jelly on Tokyo creating a 40-sq-km firestorm that killed over 100,000 and maimed another million. It was the most destructive single bombing in history, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs.
TIL When Adolf Hitler decided to commit suicide, he fed some cyanide to his dog to make sure it worked. His private nurse later said that the people in the bunker were more distraught by the death of his dog than that of his wife, Eva Braun.
TIL of "The Hole": a facility operated by Scientology that has reportedly held people against their will for months, humiliating them.
TIL Sir David Lean's 1948 film adaption of Oliver Twist was banned in Israel for Sir Alec Guinness's performance as Fagin, which it considered too anti-Semitic. Egypt banned it for portraying Fagin too sympathetically
TIL that in 2020 Sweden discovered that one of their intelligence officers, who had worked at NATO HQ, and was the FSB liaison, had been faking his credentials for 18 years and was not in fact a Major in the Swedish Army.
TIL that Volvo has integrated a child booster seat into some of its vehicles for 25 years, negating the need to buy and install (and constantly have a seat taken up by) a third-party booster seat.