[Curiosities] 16 curious facts that you may not know

[S e u o n g]

1. In 1998, Sony had the opportunity to buy the rights to almost every Marvel character for $ 25 million. They chose not to, save for Spider-Man, which they bought for 7 million. The reason? They did not consider the rest of the Marvel characters to be 'relevant'.

 

2. The Nazis burned all of Sigmund Freud's books. When he found out, the well-known psychologist “praised” the progress: “In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are happy to burn my books.

 

3. In 1959, a South Carolina librarian called the police because a 9-year-old black boy did not want to leave. The boy later earned a Ph.D. in physics from MIT and died in 1986 as one of the astronauts aboard the space shuttle Challenger. The library that in the past did not let him pick up books now bears his name, Ronald McNair. 

 

4. Angelina Jolie tried to hire a hit man to kill her when she was young, because she believed that murder would be easier for her family to cope with than suicide. The hit man in question ended up talking to her and managed to convince her to wait a month and be able to seek treatment for her depression. 

5. In 1880, the director of the Harvard Astronomical Observatory was so frustrated with his team that he often said "My Scottish maid would do a thousand times better!" And he did. The director hired his maid, William Fleming, who became a team manager for decades, classified dozens of stars, and discovered the Horsehead Nebula in the Orion Constellation.

 

6. Singer Billy Joel never sells the front row seats to see his true fans in front of him. He usually gives them to people who have cheap tickets, to show that the front row is not always for rich people. 

 

7. Carrie Fisher sent a package containing a cow's tongue to a producer who had abused a friend of hers. The actress sent a note along with the package that said: "The next thing I send will be something yours in a much smaller box".

 

8. Lionel Royce, a Jewish actor, lost his job in Nazi Germany. Without giving up, he went to the Alps, grew a beard and dyed all his hair by bathing in hydrogen peroxide. He returned to the stage posing as an actor from the countryside, and was praised by the Nazis in his career for the "superiority" that he demonstrated with his "Aryan blood." 

 

9. After Nintendo's failure to launch its Wii U console, company president Satoru Iwata cut his salary in half for half a year so that his employees wouldn't have to suffer the consequences of a mistake he knew yours. 

 

10. Arnold Schwarzenegger was not allowed to dub his own role in "Terminator" into German, his mother tongue, because his accent was considered very "village" by Germanic standards, and the production company considered it to be very ridiculous to have a killing machine from the future that goes back in time to talk to a villager. 

 

11. Kate Winslet keeps her Oscar in the bathroom so her guests can hold it up and improvise their own thank you speeches without feeling observed. 

 

12. There is a restaurant in New York that does not have renowned chefs or cooks, as it employs grandmothers. Every day, a grandmother from a different part of the world designs her own menu, which is offered in the restaurant. 

 

13. In 2015, when Queen Elizabeth II of England visited the set of "Game of Thrones" she refused to sit on the Iron Throne because, according to protocol, as a queen she is prohibited from sitting on a foreign throne. 

 

14. In 1992 Nirvana gave a concert in Buenos Aires where people did not seem satisfied with the opening act, Calamity Jane, a female group to which they threw mud and trash. Kurt Cobain was so concerned that he sabotaged the concert by playing the group's lesser-known songs and made a pretense of playing “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, his biggest hit, but never did. (Source)

 

15. “Lose Yourself” was the first rap song to win an Oscar for Best Original Song, but Eminem, its author, neither saw the ceremony nor showed up to pick up the award because since he thought he was not going to win, he stayed caring and watching cartoons with her daughter. It was the first time in 14 years that the award winner did not perform at the gala. 

 

16. In Iceland there is a tradition called Jólabókaflóðið, where everyone gives each other books on Christmas Eve and they spend the night reading them and eating chocolate.