Eminem was one of the highest scoring Donkey Kong players in the world!

Marshall Mathers III, aka Eminem, was proud to let the world know that not only does he engage in some Donkey Kong guilty pleasures, but also that his abilities belie those of the very best – the world over. Here’s a tweet he sent in December 2009:

I just want everyone to see my actual new high Donkey Kong score. Wiebe beware!’

This was in reference to the then king of Donkey Kong, Steve Wiebe, an everyday engineer whose mission to vanquish the game warranted the release of a documentary. In March of the following year, Eminem followed up his earlier tweet with this other one:

To my fellow Kongers, peep the new high score. Just imagine if I had more spare time.’

At the time, he had a score of 465,800 – one deemed world class and just enough to land him in the Top 20 category. The rapper had a sit-down with Rolling Stone during which he officially proclaimed that he is a vintage video game junky. He’s spruced up his study lobby with Donkey Kong, Space Invaders and Frogger.

Steven Spielberg put every actor in Saving Private Ryan through army training… except for Matt Damon!

The film Saving Private Ryan was precipitated by a monument Robert Rodat saw in 1994 in Putney Corners, New Hampshire that memorialized the individuals killed during the Civil War in Vietnam. Rodat observed that names of eight siblings who all died during the American Civil War and inspired by the story, he did a bit of research and made a decision to write a story resembling the World War II set.

Rodat was to then submit the script to Mark Gordon – the producer – who liked it but only after 11 redrafts. Gordon then shared the fine copy with Hanks who also liked it and gave it to Spielberg to direct. The date for shooting Saving Private Ryan was thus set for June 27, 1997.

Before the shooting kicked off though, a number of the film’s stars had to endure boot camp training for ten days and this was overseen by Marine veteran Dale Dye and a California company that trains actors for military portrayals. The lot included Vin Diesel, Edward Burns, Tom Hanks and Giovanni Ribisi. However, Matt Damon was intentionally excluded from the military drills and this made the rest of the group resent him. The film’s epic success could be attributed to this kind of meticulous attention to detail and diligence.

Isaac Newton invented calculus because his University closed due to the bubonic plague!

Isaac Newton – the scientist who died a virgin – was born on January 4, 1643 or Christmas Day of the previous year based on the Julian calendar that was in use then. Newton was sent to Trinity College, University of Cambridge after proving he couldn’t make as good a farmer as his father.

In January 1665, he received his BA degree just as the bubonic plague was hitting London. The university was forced to close down later in the same year, advising its students to escape to the sparsely populated countryside. The young man went back to his family’s farm until the plague had passed.

Not being much of a farmer, what would idle Isaac Newton do? It is then that he began working on a branch of mathematics called infinitesimal calculus. By 1687, he was introducing it to his students at Cambridge, the first lot to experience the wrath of this head-scratching branch of mathematics.