Learn why Sesame Street purists refer to Elmo as the 'Little Red Menace.'

As adorable and beloved as Elmo is, he gets a fair bit of hate from hardcore Sesame Street purists. Some have complained that Elmo’s prominent status has caused some of the older characters (e.g. Oscar the Grouch, Grover, Cookie Monster, etc.) To have greatly reduced roles.

In it's FAQ, the Sesame Workshop responds to the allegations that Elmo referring to himself in the third person will teach children improper English by stating that this behavior “mimics the behavior of many preschoolers.” That’s right, preschoolers; you know, the age group that the show Sesame Street is produced for.

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Lawrence Fishburne lied about his age to be in Apocalypse Now!

Lawrence Fishburne’s most famous role is Morpheus in the Matrix Trilogy, yet had he never lied about his age for Apocalypse Now he would most likely never have had to opportunity!

In the 1970’s Fishburne began acting and when the legendary war epic Apocalypse Now was casting, he immediately wanted a role. At the age of fourteen he auditioned, yet knew that they would never hire such a young actor for a war movie.

Instead he said that he was 17, which was the age of the character he was hoping to play and was cast in the movie! Producers found out, yet kept him anyway and strangely the filming took so long he was actually 17 by the release of the movie!

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There’s a reported case of human-to-human cancer transmission!

Pleomorphic undifferentiated sarcoma (abbreviated PUS), also undifferentiated pleomorphic sarcoma and previously malignant fibrous histiocytoma (abbreviated MFH), is a type of soft tissue sarcoma. It is considered a diagnosis of exclusion for sarcomas that cannot be more precisely categorized.

PUS is regarded as the most common soft tissue sarcoma of late adult life. It rarely occurs in children. It occurs more often in Caucasians than those of African or Asian descent, and is a male predominant disease, afflicting two males for every female. PUS occurs most commonly in the extremities and retroperitoneum, but has been reported in other sites.

Metastasis occurs most frequently in the lungs, bones, and liver. In the extremities, it presents as a painless enlarging soft tissue mass. There is a case report of human-human transmission, in a surgeon that injured their hand while working on a PUS case. A surgeon cut his hand while resecting a tumor and seeded the patient's cancer cells on his hand.

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Squirrels forget where they hid half then nuts they collect!

Nuts rely on gravity and animals to disperse them. Squirrels are one of the most important animals to disperse nuts. They collect and store nuts so they’ll have food to last them through the winter. Gathering nuts benefits trees as well as the squirrels.

Gray squirrels bury their nuts. The problem with that is that they often forget where they’ve buried about 50 percent of the nuts. The forgotten nuts then produce trees in new areas. Red squirrels store nuts in piles on the ground. That isn’t terribly beneficial, because they dry up and don’t take root.

Red squirrels adapt better to environmental changes than gray squirrels and therefore the squirrel population is leaning more towards red squirrel survival. Unfortunately, oak, walnut, and other hardwood forests could shrink.

Gray squirrels live primarily in forests, and as their habitat gets wiped out, they have to move to farm lands and parks. They struggle to adapt.

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There is a mountain in Russia made almost entirely of iron with an estimated 7-10 Billion pounds of Iron Ore!

Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works is the third largest steel company in Russia. Magnitogorsk is a city in itself and the city and factory were developed due to a unique accumulation of iron ore in the Magnetic Mountains where they are located.

This group of mountains occupies a total area of approximately 25 square kilometers on the Asian side of the Ural River. The iron content of the best ore in the region is in excess of 70 percent. It is estimated that Magnitogorsk has 7 to 11 billion pounds of iron ore.

The factory, alongside the Tirlyanka river, was built in 1759. However, given the shallow level of the water of the river they wanted to avoid losses, and they were able to obtain permission to move their operations to the river Belaya, which gave rise to the city called Beloretsk.

So, they were granted the right to use the nearby forest, and were allowed to buy the land from the local peasants. In the Southern Urals alone, Tverdyshev and his partner founded fifteen factories. The number of people working for them reached over 6000. They were mostly serfs and civilian workers.

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