/r/todayilearned
TIL The Carpenters 1970 signature smash hit song We've Only Just Begun was originally performed by its lyricist Paul Williams (The Rainbow Connection) for a bank's TV commercial.
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TIL Little Shop of Horrors (1960) directed by Roger Corman, was made in only 5 days. Three days of cast rehearsals, immediately followed by two days and one night of principal photography.
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TIL about Skywave, a phenomenon in which radio signals "bounce" off the Earth's ionosphere. This mainly applies to AM and short wave radio signals which is why they can reach further distances.
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TIL that the 126 years old Mullaperiyar Dam in India, is considered one of the most dangerous dams in the world, threatening the lives of more than 3.5 million people due to its age, design, and seismic location. People are petitioning for its removal due to catastrophic failure risks.
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TIL The Order of the Frog is an academic order that is awarded as part of the Nobel Prize celebrations. Awardees have to jump like frogs on the University campus in keeping with tradition.
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TIL that during WW2, they experimented with running London buses on gas that's produced from burning coal. The gas was produced on a trailer that was towed by the buses.
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TIL Thomas Edison created the first ever film studio, "The black maria", which could rotate so that it could always catch the best lighting. There, they shot "The kiss" (1898) which contained the first on-screen kiss, which caused a demand for the first ever film industry censorship.
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TIL that when a cat bites you "out of the blue" or lashes out at you unprovoked it's because of something happened or something it saw outside the window even hours before. This is called redirected aggression, one of many documented types of idiopathic aggression in cats.
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