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The stairs in ye old fortress go up clockwise for a reason, it puts a right handed attackers sword against the wall to make it difficult for them to swing.

I've heard churches usually go the other way to show peaceful intent.


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In Menahem Golan's 1981 film Enter the Ninja, American stuntman and karateka Mike Stone was originally cast as protagonist Cole, and much of the film was shot with Stone in the role. However, at some point during filming, Golan became frustrated with Stone's lack of acting ability, and Stone was replaced with Italian actor Franco Nero, with Stone (masked in a ninja costume) performed all of the fight scenes, as Nero had no martial arts training. After filming concluded, Golan decided that Nero's heavy Italian accent wouldn't fit the character of Cole, a Texan (making the casting doubly strange, as Mike Stone is of Pacific Islander descent), and all of Nero's lines were dubbed by an unknown third actor.


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David M Mallon wrote:


Jefferson, who opposed this gift giving custom on principle, gave a $200 donation to Leland's congregation as a gesture of gratitude. The naming of the cheese was the first time the word "mammoth" was used as an adjective.

Keep in mind that 200 dollars was a pretty significant chunk of change for the day. Jefferson's spending habits as President would result in his own personal bankruptcy fairly soon afterwards. In that time all the expenses for the Presidency came out of the office-holder's pocket.


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Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:
David M Mallon wrote:


Jefferson, who opposed this gift giving custom on principle, gave a $200 donation to Leland's congregation as a gesture of gratitude. The naming of the cheese was the first time the word "mammoth" was used as an adjective.

Keep in mind that 200 dollars was a pretty significant chunk of change for the day. Jefferson's spending habits as President would result in his own personal bankruptcy fairly soon afterwards. In that time all the expenses for the Presidency came out of the office-holder's pocket.

All true, except for the bankruptcy part, as except for a brief period between 1800 and 1803, there were no bankruptcy laws on the books in early 19th century America.

More on Jefferson's debts.

According to his grandson and executor of his will, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, Thomas Jefferson died with $107,000 worth of debts, somewhere between 1 and 2 million dollars when adjusted for inflation.


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Icelandic actor and professional strongman Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson (b. 1988), best known for his portrayal of Ser Gregor "The Mountain" Clegane on HBO's Game Of Thrones, began his career as a professional basketball player. The 6'9" (2.06m) Björnsson played for K.R. Basket Reykjavík during the 2006-2007 season, and for FSu Selfoss during the 2007-2008 season.


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William Gibson's ground-breaking 1984 cyberpunk science fiction novel Neuromancer was written on a manual typewriter. Not only did Gibson not own a computer at the time, but he had little idea of how a computer worked, leading to a few unintentionally funny lines. (For example: "[Case's] buyer for the three megabytes of hot RAM in the Hitachi wasn't taking calls.") Still, given the circumstances, Gibson managed to prefigure some major future technological advancements, most notably, the World Wide Web.

The opening line of Neuromancer reads, "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." As TVs in the 1980s showed gray static when tuned to a dead channel, this description was meant to evoke a dark, gloomy atmosphere. However, as modern TVs show clear, bright blue when tuned to a dead channel, the description now evokes a clear, sunny day. William Gibson himself said he finds the irony amusing. Author Neil Gaiman parodied the contrast in his 1996 urban fantasy novel Neverwhere: "The sky was the perfect untroubled blue of a television screen, tuned to a dead channel."

Dark Archive

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Farts don't have lumps.


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In 2010, the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) attempted to sue online encyclopedia Wikipedia over its use of a picture of the official FBI seal on the FBI's page in the encyclopedia. The suit was later dropped.


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In 1965, 90-year-old Jeanne Louise Calment signed a deal to sell her apartment to lawyer André-François Raffray, on a contingency contract. Raffray, then aged 47 years, agreed to pay her a monthly sum of 2,500 francs (€381.12) until she died. After Raffray's death from cancer at the age of 77, in 1995, his widow continued the payments until Calment's death in 1997 at the age of 122. The Raffray family ended up paying Calment the equivalent of more than €140,000, more than double the apartment's value, over the course of 32 years.


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On average, genetic variation between any two humans is less than 0.1%, meaning that there is about 2–3 times more genetic diversity within the wild chimpanzee population than in the entire human gene pool.

Of the less than 0.1% of human genetic differentiation, 85% exists within any randomly chosen local population, regardless of origin. Genetic data shows that no matter how population groups are defined, two humans from the same population group are approximately as different from each other as two people from any two different population groups.


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Swedish Fish are a fish-shaped chewy wine gum candy, originally developed by the Swedish candy producer Malaco in the late 1950s for the U.S. market. In Sweden, wine gums are sold in many different shapes, of which fish is just one. The Swedish Fish candy is marketed under the name "pastellfiskar", literally "pastel fish", and under the Malaco brand among others.

Today the Swedish Fish consumed in North America are made in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, by Mondelēz International. In Canada, Swedish Fish are distributed under Cadbury's Maynards brand. Outside of Sweden, Swedish Fish are embossed with the word "Swedish," while in Sweden, they are embossed with the brand name "Malaco." Originally colored red with a flavor unique to the candy (often guessed to be lingonberry, but never verified), they are now also available in several different colors and flavors.


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NenkotaMoon wrote:
Farts don't have lumps.

"Little Johnny" jokes are about a small boy who likes to ask embarrassing questions and has a very straightforward way of thinking. At times he is well educated in the terminology of sex, while at others he is all too innocent. Joke characters similar to Little Johnny are known in other countries as "Toto" (France), "Klein Fritzchen" (Germany*), "Pepito" (Mexico), and "Hüdaverdi" (Turkey), to name a few.

*Yes, the Germans sometimes tell jokes.

Examples of "Little Johnny" jokes:

Probably not NSFW:
Ms. Smith stopped to reprove Johnny for making faces: "Johnny, when I was small, my mother used to tell me that if I made ugly faces, at some moment it would freeze and stay like that." Johnny looked up at her and thoughtfully replied: "Well, Ms. Smith, you can't say you weren't forewarned."

Maybe NSFW:
The teacher asked little Johnny to use the word "definitely" in a sentence. Little Johnny replies, "Teacher, do farts have lumps in them?" The Teacher says, "Of course not Johnny," to which Johnny replies, "Then I have definitely s**t my pants,".

Definitely NSFW:
A house was being built across the street and Little Johnny asked mother if he could go watch the carpenters work. His mother agreed and said, "Maybe you will learn something." So Little Johnny sits on a stump all day and watches the men work. After they finish for the day, Johnny goes home and his mother asks, "Well, Johnny, did you learn anything today?"

"Yeah! A lot," said Little Johnny. His mom said, "Tell me about it, what did you learn?"

"Well, it's not easy to put up a door. You try to put the motherf%!#er up but that shit doesn't fit, so you take it down and shave a cunt hair off each side. Then you put that cocksuckin' son of a b~+~* back up."

Johnny's mother, in shock, exclaimed angrily "Johnny! That's terrible! Just you wait until your father gets home!"

A few hours later, Little Johnny's father came home. "You won't believe the kind of language our son has been picking up over at that construction site. He..." Before she could finish, Johnny repeated the story to his mother and father.

"Like I said before, it's not easy to put up a door. You try to put the motherf%%~er up but that shit doesn't fit, so you take it down and shave a cunt hair off each side. Then you put that cocksuckin' son of a b$%~~ back up."

Johnny's father became very angry and said to his son, "Johnny! Go out back and fetch me a switch!" To which Little Johnny replied, "F%~~ you, that's the electrician's job!"


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Created by artist/writer Rob Liefeld and writer Fabian Nicieza, Deadpool made his first appearance in the pages of The New Mutants #98, cover dated February 1991. According to Nicieza, Liefeld came up with the character's visual design and name, and Nicieza himself came up with the character's speech mannerisms.

Liefeld, a fan of the Teen Titans comics, showed his new character to then-writer Fabian Nicieza. Upon seeing the costume and noting his characteristics (killer with super agility), Nicieza contacted Liefeld, saying "this is Deathstroke from Teen Titans". Nicieza gave Deadpool the real name of "Wade Wilson" as an inside-joke to being "related" to "Slade Wilson", Deathstroke.

Other inspirations were Spider-Man and Wolverine. Liefeld states: "Wolverine and Spider-Man were the two properties I was competing with at all times. I didn’t have those, I didn’t have access to those. I had to make my own Spider-Man and Wolverine. That’s what Cable and Deadpool were meant to be, my own Spider-Man and my own Wolverine." Both Deadpool and Cable were also meant to be tied into Wolverine’s history already from the start, as Liefeld describes: "Wolverine was my guy. If I could tie anything into Wolverine, I was winning."


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"Awesome Mix, Vol. 1," the soundtrack album to the 2014 film Guardians of the Galaxy, reached number one on the US Billboard 200 chart, the first film soundtrack ever to reach number one without a single original song. It was also nominated at the 2015 Grammy Awards for Best Soundtrack.


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Actor/director Quentin Tarantino was actor/producer John Travolta's original choice to helm his vanity project, Battlefield Earth (2000), based on the novel of the same name by L. Ron Hubbard. When Tarantino declined, the job ended up going to George Lucas protégé Roger Christian, who had previously served as second unit director for Lucas' 1999 film Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, and had been nominated for two Academy Awards: as production designer on 1977's Star Wars (AKA Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope) and art director for the 1979 Ridley Scott project Alien (Christian won the Oscar for Star Wars).

The original screenplay for Battlefield Earth was written by J. David Shapiro, who had previously written the screenplay for Mel Brooks' Robin Hood: Men In Tights (1993). However, Travolta was extremely unhappy with the script and, after multiple revisions, fired Shapiro, bringing in inexperienced screenwriter Corey Mandell, whose only credits at the time were as the writer of a 1991 TV movie called Love Kills, and as a production assistant on Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982). Shapiro was still credited on the film, despite his attempts to disown the project.

Unbelievably, the film bombed spectacularly. J. David Shapiro appeared in person at the 2010 Golden Raspberry Awards to accept the Worst Picture of the Decade award for Battlefield Earth, after which he quoted a New York Times review of the film, "Battlefield Earth is about the extinction of the human race, and after seeing this movie I'm all for it".


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In December of 1987, to promote the upcoming VHS & Laserdisc release of the 1987 film RoboCop, a stand-in (not original actor Peter Weller) wearing the RoboCop costume appeared at a charity event with former United States President Richard Nixon and posed for a photo op, which eventually appeared in Billboard magazine. The caption under the photo read:

"Richard M. Nixon is escorted by RoboCop at a national board meeting of the Boys Club of America. The RoboCop character was on hand to call attention to Orion Home Video’s RoboCop RubOut promotion. Sweepstakes tickets, packaged with each “RoboCop” cassette, offer a number of instant prizes for retailers as well as $25,000 in donations to the Boys Club. The sweepstakes is part of a $3 million promotional effort launched by Orion in conjunction with the action-adventure film’s video release. The cassette will be available in video stores beginning Jan. 28 for a suggested list price of $89.98."


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Director Joe Berlinger has stated that he originally made the conceived of his 2000 film Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows with more of an ambiguous, even satirical, tone that focused on the characters' psychological unraveling after their night spent in the Black Hills.

However, Artisan Entertainment recut the film and re-shot certain scenes to add more "traditional" horror movie elements, thus creating what they saw as a more "commercial" film. Namely, the footage of the main characters murdering the foreign tourists was shot weeks prior to the film's release date, and was incorporated in the film to add more visual violence.

The subtitle Book of Shadows was another studio addition; the film was originally titled simply Blair Witch 2, and no "Book of Shadows" appears in the film. The original cut of the film also featured Frank Sinatra's song "Witchcraft" during the opening credits, but was replaced by the studio with "Disposable Teens" by Marilyn Manson. Berlinger repeatedly expresses his dislike of the studio's changes throughout the film's DVD commentary.


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Jay Weinberg, current drummer of the heavy metal band Slipknot and former drummer of punk rock band Against Me! is the son of Max Weinberg, Late Night With Conan O'Brien bandleader and drummer for Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band.


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David M Mallon wrote:
NenkotaMoon wrote:
Farts don't have lumps.

"Little Johnny" jokes are about a small boy who likes to ask embarrassing questions and has a very straightforward way of thinking. At times he is well educated in the terminology of sex, while at others he is all too innocent. Joke characters similar to Little Johnny are known in other countries as "Toto" (France), "Klein Fritzchen" (Germany*), "Pepito" (Mexico), and "Hüdaverdi" (Turkey), to name a few.

*Yes, the Germans sometimes tell jokes.

Examples of "Little Johnny" jokes:

** spoiler omitted **

** spoiler omitted **

** spoiler omitted **...

Definitely NSFW is still told by carpenters and electricians alike in the US to this day; I had no idea about the global applicability. ;)


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During the filming of the 2000 film Dungeons & Dragons, a notoriously poorly-made film and box office bomb, actor Marlon Wayans periodically had to fly from Prague, where Dungeons & Dragons was being filmed, to New York City in order to film his scenes in a little film called Requiem For A Dream. How's that for tonal whiplash.


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Contrary to popular belief, the character "Thong" in director Joe D'Amato's 1982 sword-and-sorcery film The Blade Master (AKA Ator l'Invincible II AKA Cave Dwellers), was not portrayed by a Caucasian actor in "yellowface" makeup-- he was portrayed by an Asian actor in "yellowface" makeup. Joe D'Amato wasn't exactly known for his subtle filmmaking techniques...


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The lead production designer on the notorious 1993 box-office bomb Super Mario Bros. was David L. Snyder, who was nominated for an Academy Award in 1983 for his work as lead production designer of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982). The entirety of Super Mario Bros. was shot in and around the abandoned Ideal Cement factory in North Carolina, which was later used as a primary filming location for Alex Proyas' The Crow (1994).


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David M Mallon wrote:

Swedish Fish are a fish-shaped chewy wine gum candy, originally developed by the Swedish candy producer Malaco in the late 1950s for the U.S. market. In Sweden, wine gums are sold in many different shapes, of which fish is just one. The Swedish Fish candy is marketed under the name "pastellfiskar", literally "pastel fish", and under the Malaco brand among others.

Today the Swedish Fish consumed in North America are made in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, by Mondelēz International. In Canada, Swedish Fish are distributed under Cadbury's Maynards brand. Outside of Sweden, Swedish Fish are embossed with the word "Swedish," while in Sweden, they are embossed with the brand name "Malaco." Originally colored red with a flavor unique to the candy (often guessed to be lingonberry, but never verified), they are now also available in several different colors and flavors.

In Sweden, you can also get them as clams.


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Kajehase wrote:
David M Mallon wrote:

Swedish Fish are a fish-shaped chewy wine gum candy, originally developed by the Swedish candy producer Malaco in the late 1950s for the U.S. market. In Sweden, wine gums are sold in many different shapes, of which fish is just one. The Swedish Fish candy is marketed under the name "pastellfiskar", literally "pastel fish", and under the Malaco brand among others.

Today the Swedish Fish consumed in North America are made in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, by Mondelēz International. In Canada, Swedish Fish are distributed under Cadbury's Maynards brand. Outside of Sweden, Swedish Fish are embossed with the word "Swedish," while in Sweden, they are embossed with the brand name "Malaco." Originally colored red with a flavor unique to the candy (often guessed to be lingonberry, but never verified), they are now also available in several different colors and flavors.

In Sweden, you can also get them as clams.

I once worked in a video rental store (remember those?) and when we changed owners he decided we'd no longer carry Swedish Fish in the candy section, so I got a case of it to bring home. One of my players ate 11 boxes worth in one game. That many is not good for the bowels, he later found out.


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Looooooooooot of starch.


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The robot puppet "Burton" on Noah Antwiler's internet video series The Spoony Experiment was originally supposed to be one of a trio of robot puppets for a Mystery Science Theater 3000-style web series. "Burton" is named after the character Jack Burton (Kurt Russell) from John Carpenter's 1986 film Big Trouble In Little China. The other two robots were to be named "Morgan" (after TV host Morgan Webb) and "Sorbo" (after actor Kevin Sorbo), but were never built, and the original show concept was re-formed into the current Spoony Experiment format.


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Though still wildly successful, the summer 1977 Japanese release of George Lucas' Star Wars (AKA Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope) was outperformed at the Japanese box office by the animated film Space Battleship Yamato, which had premiered several months earlier and was still in theaters.


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David M Mallon wrote:
Though still wildly successful, the summer 1977 Japanese release of George Lucas' Star Wars (AKA Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope) was outperformed at the Japanese box office by the animated film Space Battleship Yamato, which had premiered several months earlier and was still in theaters.

if it had never been made, Tomino would have made Mobile Suit Gundam live action and 1:1 with the novel.


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The Swedish subtitles for the 1985 James Bond movie A View To A Kill contains a rather egregious mistranslation: as the villains are flying in their blimp over San Francisco, they comment: "What a view." "To a kill." In the Swedish subtitles it goes: "What a view." "Yeah, Tokyo."

In the Malay-subtitled Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (AKA Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone; 2001), in the scene where Quirrell (Ian Hart) bursts in and announces "There's a troll in the dungeon," "troll" is translated into Malay as "orang kerdil" - "tiny person."

The Japanese version of the Magic: the Gathering card "Yawgmoth's Agenda" (i.e. the evil plans of the villain Yawgmoth) was translated into a phrase equivalent to "Yawgmoth's Day Planner."


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The first wah-wah pedal was built by Warwick Electronics Inc./Thomas Organ Company engineer Bradley J Plunkett in November 1966. (Although there'd been similar precursor devices used since the 50:s.)


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The Halla lumber mill in Kotka, Finland, had difficulties on orders in Arabic countries. Finally, a whole cargo of premium pine was returned, untouched. It was found that the sawmill had stamped the ends of the boards with company logo, "HALLA." Eventually someone pointed that Arabic is read from right to left.


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David M Mallon wrote:
The Halla lumber mill in Kotka, Finland, had difficulties on orders in Arabic countries. Finally, a whole cargo of premium pine was returned, untouched. It was found that the sawmill had stamped the ends of the boards with company logo, "HALLA." Eventually someone pointed that Arabic is read from right to left.

*Likely apocryphal. However, still funny.


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After being asked to submit his candidacy for a "backup list" of potential Town Council members for Kolbotn, Oslo, Norway, Darkthrone drummer Fenriz was unexpectedly elected to the position. He will be required to serve as Councilman Gylve Fenris Nagell for four years before stepping down is an option. His "campaign" consisted of a picture of himself holding his cat, Peanut Butter, and the slogan "please don't vote for me."


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In 2002, American singer Lance Bass (formerly of the pop group NSYNC) trained for and received cosmonaut certification and went on to Houston's Johnson Space Center (JSC) to take part in astronaut training. He was scheduled to fly into space on the Soyuz TMA-1 mission that was to be launched on October 30, 2002. However, the organizations sponsoring Bass' space flight backed out for various reasons, and Bass was replaced on the TMA-1 flight by Russian cosmonaut Yury Lonchakov. If Bass had completed the mission, he would have been the third "space" tourist, after American engineer Dennis Tito and South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth.

In 2003, Bass began serving as World Space Week's Youth Spokesman, and has stated that he believes young people becoming more interested in space exploration "will help the future of our planet". Bass is a member of the National Space Society, a non-profit educational space advocacy organization founded by Dr. Wernher Von Braun. Bass has also served on the National Space Society's Board of Governors since October 2004, alongside other space advocates such as actor Tom Hanks and author and futurist Sir Arthur C. Clarke. In a 2007 interview with GQ magazine, Bass stated that he "absolutely" still intends on going to space, and that he hopes to work on a space documentary. Bass has also retained fluency in Russian, which he was required to learn during his cosmonaut training.


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Australian director George Miller's 1979 action film Mad Max was shot on a budget of around $350,000 AUS. The majority of the extras playing bikers in the film were members of actual biker gangs from the Melbourne area, including members of the Melbourne Hell's Angels. Most of the extras and a large portion of the crew were paid in beer.

Mad Max would eventually gross ~$100 million US worldwide, earning it the Guinness World Record for "most profitable film of all time" for twenty years, until being unseated by The Blair Witch Project in 1999.


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The top ten most profitable films of all time (in terms of return on investment, in US dollars, not adjusted for inflation, as of 2014) are:

10. The Conjuring (2013), directed by James Wan, starring Patrick Wilson; budget: $20,000,000; box office: $318,000,000
9. My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002), directed by Joel Zwick, starring Nia Vardalos; budget: $5,000,000; box office: $368,000,000
8. The Full Monty (1997), directed by Peter Cattaneo, starring Robert Carlyle; budget: $3,500,000; box office: $257,000,000
7. Saw (2004), directed by James Wan, starring Cary Elwes; budget: $1,200,000; box office: $103,000,000
6. Rocky (1976), directed by John Avildsen, starring Sylvester Stallone; budget: $995,000; box office: $225,000,000
5. American Graffiti (1973), directed by George Lucas, starring Richard Dreyfuss; budget: $777,000; box office: $140,000,000
4. Napoleon Dynamite (2004), directed by Jared Hess, starring Jon Heder; budget: $400,000; box office: $46,000,000
3. Mad Max (1979), directed by George Miller, starring Mel Gibson; budget: $300,000; box office: $100,000,000
2. The Blair Witch Project (1999), directed by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, starring Heather Donahue; budget: $60,000; box office: $248,000,000
1. Paranormal Activity (2007), directed by Oren Peli, starring Katie Featherston; budget: $15,000; box office: $193,000,000

Source

Silver Crusade

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David M Mallon wrote:
After being asked to submit his candidacy for a "backup list" of potential Town Council members for Kolbotn, Oslo, Norway, Darkthrone drummer Fenriz was unexpectedly elected to the position. He will be required to serve as Councilman Gylve Fenris Nagell for four years before stepping down is an option. His "campaign" consisted of a picture of himself holding his cat, Peanut Butter, and the slogan "please don't vote for me."

Aww, poor guy :(


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Both Alan Rickman and Alfred Molina auditioned for parts on the regular cast of Red Dwarf.


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An apocryphal story goes that when notoriously meddlesome film producer Harvey Weinstein was charged with handling the 1999 U.S. release of director Hayao Miyazaki's 1997 film Princess Mononoke, Miyazaki sent him a samurai sword in the mail. Attached to the blade was a stark message: "No cuts".

Miyazaki later commented on the alleged incident: "Actually, my producer did that. Although I did go to New York to meet this man, this Harvey Weinstein, and I was bombarded with this aggressive attack, all these demands for cuts. I defeated him."


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"Harvey ScissorsHands" :)


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David M Mallon wrote:

An apocryphal story goes that when notoriously meddlesome film producer Harvey Weinstein was charged with handling the 1999 U.S. release of director Hayao Miyazaki's 1997 film Princess Mononoke, Miyazaki sent him a samurai sword in the mail. Attached to the blade was a stark message: "No cuts".

Miyazaki later commented on the alleged incident: "Actually, my producer did that. Although I did go to New York to meet this man, this Harvey Weinstein, and I was bombarded with this aggressive attack, all these demands for cuts. I defeated him."

Considering Miyazaki's displeasure with the cuts and rewrite style dubbing of the 1984 US release of Warriors of the Wind (Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind), this is hardly surprising.

I still prefer the Warriors version though.


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Stan Bush's song "The Touch," featured prominently in the 1986 animated film Transformers: The Movie, was originally written for Sylvester Stallone's Cobra, released the same year, but ended up being left out. "The Touch" was released as a double A-side single alongside Weird Al Yankovic's song "Dare To Be Stupid".


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When people consider biodiversity crises and major hotzones of extinction, people almost always turn to places in Africa or South America. In fact the current extinction capital of the world is located in the US State of Hawaii. Since 1800, approximately 30 species of bird have gone extinct on the islands, due to habitat destruction, invasive species, and the spread of avian malaria, which most of the native species have no immunity to. This is on top of extinctions that occurred a thousand years ago, as a result of initial Polynesian settlement of the islands. Numerous snails and insects have gone extinct as well.

The extinction crisis is still ongoing, and since 1980 a total of 7 bird species have gone extinct, the last in 2006. This includes the last representative of an entire group (family) of birds found nowhere else BUT Hawaii Several other species have had populations plummet in recent years, raising concern of the possibility of further bird extinction.

Despite being the extinction capital of the world at current, The US only spends ~14% of it's annual budget on conservation of Hawaiian birds, and the average endangered bird on Hawaii receives only 16% as much funding as endangered species in Alaska and the continental 48 states.


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Paul W.S. Anderson's 1998 film Soldier is loaded with references to other media. For example:

Nearly all of the commendations in the service record of "Todd 3465" (Kurt Russell) are references to Russell's other film roles:
- Cash Medal of Bravery = Tango & Cash
- Plissken Patch = Escape From New York and Escape From L.A. (also references Snake Plissken's eyepatch)
- O'Neil Ring Award = Stargate (also references the Stargate "ring")
- MacCready Cross = The Thing
- Capt. Ron Trophy = Captain Ron
- Dexter Riley Award = The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes; Now You See Him, Now You Don't; and The Strongest Man In The World
- McCaffrey Fire Award = Backdraft (references Russell's role as a firefighter)]

Other references in Todd's dossier include:
- Under "Combat History": "The Battle Of Shanghai" refers to Big Trouble In Little China, and "Battle of Tannhauser Gate" and "Shoulder Of Orion" refer to Blade Runner (it is strongly implied that Soldier takes place in the same fictional universe).
- Under "Ordnance Levels": "USCM Smartgun" refers to Aliens, "Doom Mk. IV BFG" refers to the video game Doom, and "Illudium PU36 ESM" is a reference to Marvin the Martian's superweapon from Looney Tunes.
- Under "Unit Statistics": Todd's combat skills are broken down into Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma, a reference to Dungeons & Dragons (the numbers given, however, have nothing to do with the game itself).

The map of the Trinity Moons contains a notation reading "Sector ZZ9, plural ZA; Mode: Zaphod," a reference to the novel The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy.


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During the Age of Sail (approx. early 16th - mid-19th centuries), sailors often wore a gold or silver earring (often a stereotypical attribute of pirates in modern fiction) in one ear. Aside from various superstitious reasons (for example, that pierced ears could prevent seasickness), a silver or gold earring was worth enough to pay for a sailor's funeral if his body washed ashore. Some seamen even engraved the name of their home port on the inside of the earring so that their bodies could be sent to their families for a proper burial. If a man died on a ship, the earrings helped to cover the cost of transporting his body home so that he wouldn't be buried at sea or on foreign soil.


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British chemist and mineralogist James Louis Macie Smithson (1765-1829) was born the illegitimate son of Hugh Percy, 1st Duke of Northumberland (formerly Hugh Smithson). Smithson never married and had no children; therefore, when he wrote his will, he left his estate to his nephew, or his nephew's family if his nephew died before Smithson.

If Smithson's nephew was to die without heirs, however, Smithson's will stipulated that his estate be donated to the founding of an educational institution in the United States. In 1835, his nephew died and so could not claim to be the recipient of his estate; therefore, Smithson became the founding donor of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. despite having never visited the United States.

Smithson died in 1829 and was buried outside Genoa, Italy. However, in 1904, Scottish-American engineer and inventor Alexander Graham Bell (credited as the inventor of the first practical telephone) requested and was granted the opportunity to exhume the body of Smithson and transport it to the United States. In 1905, Smithson's body was re-interred in a crypt (designed by sculptor Gutzon Borglum, of Mt. Rushmore fame) inside the south tower room of the Smithsonian Museum's Smithsonian Castle.


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The name of the character "Dr. Simon Bar Sinister," the main antagonist of the animated television series Underdog (1964-1967/1973), is a macaronic (mixed-language) pun and reference to a heraldic mark, called barre sinister in French and bend sinister in English.

The bend sinister is a line from the top right to the bottom left, and its diminutive form, correctly called a baton sinister, denotes illegitimacy. Despite its heraldic inaccuracy, the term bar sinister has been used in literary contexts to denote bastardy since the early 19th century.

The name "Simon" is of Hebrew origin, and the word "bar" in Hebrew typically denoted a patronymic surname (for example, "Simon bar Jonah," the birth name of Saint Peter). Thus, Simon Bar Sinister's name is a doubly macaronic play on words.

Scarab Sages

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Since it was released in 2009, the Angry Birds game has been downloaded more than 3 billion times across all versions and platforms of mobile devices.

Silver Crusade

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Aberzombie wrote:
Since it was released in 2009, the Angry Birds game has been downloaded more than 3 billion times across all versions and platforms of mobile devices.

Sneaky Finnish, stealing all our attention.


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Is that game really that bloody old?

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