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At age 10, Russian Jewish immigrant Mila Kunis auditioned for a role as a Russian Jewish immigrant in "Make A Wish, Molly," but did not get the part. Instead, she was cast as a Mexican girl in a supporting role.
The modern Oval Office, designed in 1934, was created to accommodate President Franklin D. Roosevelt's use of a wheelchair, facilitating easy movement between the office and the residence.
Purple has long symbolized royalty because, in Ancient Rome, the dye was made by fermenting snail liquid. It required 12,000 snails to produce just one gram of dye, leading the Caesars to claim the color exclusively for themselves.
In 2020, a woman discovered a 22% DNA match with a man through an online test. She later learned he was her uncle, who had been kidnapped at age six in 1951 and remained missing for 70 years. The kidnappers took him from Oakland to the East Coast, where they raised him.
After portraying Jim Morrison in The Doors, Val Kilmer sought therapy to shed the character's persona and accent, which he found difficult to shake off.
Major music labels successfully sued Joel Tenenbaum for illegally downloading and sharing 30 songs. A jury ordered him to pay $675,000 (or $22,000 per song), leading him to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2015. The $675,000 judgment was eventually discharged by a judge in 2016.
The 2017 film "Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets" is the most expensive independent film ever made, with a production budget of about $180 million. Despite grossing $226 million worldwide, it was a box-office failure due to high production and advertising costs.
In 2013, the first known deaths of storm chasers or meteorologists by a tornado occurred near El Reno, Oklahoma. Tim Samaras, his son Paul, and Carl Young died when the widest tornado on record struck, expanding from 1 mile to 2.6 miles wide in roughly 30 seconds.
In 1996, 17-year-old Travis Lewis murdered Sally McKay on her property. Sally's daughter, Martha, believed in forgiveness and supported him during his imprisonment. She even gave him and his mother jobs on her property after his parole in 2018. Tragically, Travis killed Martha in the same home in 2020.
Aki Ra, a former child soldier conscripted by the Khmer Rouge, has spent his life removing landmines in Cambodia post-Civil War. Over 20 years, he has cleared more than 50,000 landmines using just a stick and a knife.
Sources: 611, 612, 613, 614, 615, 616, 617, 618, 619, 620