TIL Thread: Today I learned...

[PonyHag714]

Sounds like it would be interesting to watch.

[Mr. Big]

TIL that Frank Capra, the guy who directed "It's a Wonderful Life", was a pro-Mussolini fascist

Ironically, he did a lot of anti-Nazi films during WWII.

[Mr. Big]

TIL that ketchup wasn't always made with tomatoes. Instead, the primary ingredient used to be mushrooms.

[Adiwan]

Probably the best mush-up of ingredients imaginable.

[Mr. Big]

TIL that Linus in "Peanuts" was named after another cartoonist Charles Schulz knew, named Linus Maurer.



He died in 2016 at age 90.

[Pocket]

TIL that piece of elevator music that internet videos frequently use when they briefly cut to a "please stand by" screen as a gag is "Local Forecast" by Kevin MacLeod.

[DaikatunaRevengeance]

I swear everything was composed by Kevin Macleod

[Jill]

much like your posting

[DaikatunaRevengeance]

No, that is unfortunatly composed by me.

[Adiwan]

Not really a TIL more a "over the past months I learned" OTPMIL.
I am preparing and running a D&D adventure and it is imperative to have prepared two to three times the content than anticipated for the case that the players will derail and skip major parts of the story. The players will definitely will do something unexpected or the DM will not consider something. Despite knowing that I really learned that and actively implement that.
That leads to the next thing I learned alongside that.
DO NOT ADMIT BEING NERVOUS OR UNPREPARED! Just be silent and let the players talk while thinking what to do next and shuffle the prepared content, like putting a skipped encounter to the location the players plan to go to. I heard so often that is distracting for the players to interject while thinking saying that it is not going as planned. I'm playing online and configured Discord to push-to-talk with my DIY foot switch, which makes it easy to be silent to my players while expressing all the panic unnoticed.
It is not easy to overcome the instinct to fill the silence with literal noise due to nervousness while being on the hook to come up with a plan.
Yesterday I was running a session and despite lack of sleep it went surprisingly well because of those points.

[Mr. Big]

So you know Jolly Roger? That skull and crossbones flag often associated with pirates in media?

Well, TIL that there are only two (or three, although the one of the left is disputed) authentic Jolly Roger flags that's known to exist and preserved.



The one on the right is in a museum in Finland.

[Mr. Big]

So I've known about the novelty song "Snoopy vs. the Red Baron" for a while



What I didn't know until today was that they never actually got permission from Schulz to do this song, and actually got sued by him and his syndicate over it (and they couldn't play this in Canada because of it, so they had an alternate version of the song where Snoopy is replaced with "Squeaky")

Eventually they settled, with Schulz and the syndicate getting residuals for the song. Schulz then gave the band permission to do more Snoopy-themed novelty songs, which they put out a bunch of.

[PonyHag714]

Interesting. I never knew they couldn't play the original song here in Canada, although I did hear the Christmas themed song up here as a kid.

[Mr. Big]

TIL about the "Gay Jesus film" hoax, where since around 1979 chain letters got sent around claiming that a film depicting Jesus as gay would be made, and the letter urged the Illinois Attorney General to ban the non-existent film.

As a result, for years the AG of Illinois got bombarded with thousands of letter demanding they ban this non-existent film. They got sick of constant letters about it so, in 1985, the office enlisted Ann Landers (a nationally syndicated advice columnist that originated from Chicago) to help reassure the public that no such movie exists, to which she replied "Hoaxes die hard, and the zanier the hoax, the more difficult it is to try to convince people that it is not true"

More at Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_Jesus_film_hoax

[Mr. Big]

TIL that grocery stores in the UK have clock towers that never actually tell the correct time

[Mr. Big]

Also TIL about the Pepsi contest in the Philippines that killed 5 people

[Pocket]

TIL Lord of the Flies was written as a deconstruction of another book called The Coral Island, which was also about a group of kids who get shipwrecked except it's an adventure story for kids with a happy ending. Both Robert Lewis Stevenson and J.M. Barrie cited it as the inspiration for their own famous stories, and today it's almost completely forgotten.

[Mr. Big]

TIL about Frank Fay, a vaudeville star who invented what we now call stand-up comedy.

He was also an abusive husband to actress Barbara Stanwyck and a massive fascist More info here.

[Madeline]

TiL that internet users in Japan have a Snoopy emoticon:

でつ

[Pocket]

TIL I'm older than the invention of corn mazes.

[Adiwan]

TIL that it's possible to stream videos from VLC to Chromecast. In the 'playback' menu under 'renderer' there is a Chromecast option.

[Mr. Big]

TIL that the music associated with circus was originally a military march called "Entry of the Gladiators"

Oh, and it was composed by a guy named Julius Fucik. A rather unfortunate last name

[Mr. Big]

TIL that Chris Columbus was supposed to direct "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation", but quit after a short time because, to put it mildly, Chevy Chase was too much of an asshole for Columbus to deal with.

Feeling bad for him, the film's writer, John Hughes, gave Chris Columbus another Christmas script he did as a consolation for him, which he accepted. A little film called "Home Alone"

[Mr. Big]

TIL that Eugene Poddany, music composer in animation best known for his work on "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" (including composing the music for "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch") apparently died from suicide.

Specifically, it was a failed murder-suicide

More at https://tralfaz.blogspot.com/2019/08/th ... poser.html