12 Farm-Fresh Trivia Tidbits for Friday, December 20, 2024
If you want your funeral to be more of a party than a sob-fest, we know a great little funeral home in Ohio.
Click right here to get the best of Cracked sent to your inbox.
The Ohio Funeral Home That Wants to Put the ‘Fun’ in ‘Funeral’
Evergreen Funeral Cremation and Reception applied for a liquor license with plans to change the vibe of the funerals held there. The owner says, “My role in this position is to kind of be a party planner for the dead.”
Syphilis: One More Example of American Ingenuity
A study on the origins of syphilis has found that the bacteria that causes it likely popped up in the Americas at some point within the last 8,000 years.
The Tallest Couple in History
Two of P.T. Barnum’s employees, Anna Haining Swan and Martin Van Buren Bates, met and fell in love on tour, and got married in 1871. With a combined height of 15-foot-8, they remain the tallest known married couple ever.
The Source of the Hydroxychloroquine Fad That Was Popular Among Contrarian Idiots Has Officially Been Retracted
Hydroxychloroquine is a malaria drug that people tried to use as a COVID treatment because one jagoff wrote a deeply flawed paper about it. That paper was finally retracted on scientific and ethical grounds, making it the second most-cited paper in history to be withdrawn.
The Stranded NASA Astronauts Got Another Month Added to Their Stay
The Boeing Starliner turned Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams’ eight-day work trip into an eight-month nightmare, and their return trip has once again been pushed back an additional month. They’re apparently having a good time, though. Or Williams says, they’re “just living in space is super fun.”
What Are the Biggest Tech Disasters of 2024?
MIT’s Technology Review has dropped its annual list of biggest tech blunders, including 23andMe going ass-up, the Boeing Starliner fiasco and simply “A.I. Slop.”
Americans Set Their Wedding Dates Based on College Football
The Washington Post studied data from The Knot and found that weddings were scheduled 80 percent more often on weekends where the local college football team was on a bye week.
We Have Officially Defeated the Murder Hornets
After the detection of Northern Giant Hornets in America caused a nationwide panic in August of 2019, the USDA (and the equivalent in Washington state) enacted a plan to seek out and eradicate them. They just announced they’ve successfully murdered off the murder hornets.
Cool: A Phone Number to Talk to A.I.
ChatGPT made a hotline, 1-800-CHATGPT, and is graciously offering everyone 15 free minutes per month to talk to its chatbot.
Your Black Kitchen Utensil Are Still Safe (Kinda)
A scientific report that made international news found that black plastic used in some spatulas and kids’ toys contained toxic levels of flame-retardant chemicals. They just double-checked their work, and found that a math error vastly overestimated the amount of the toxic substance BDE-209 in these plastics. But they warned that any exposure to it is pretty awful, so maybe stay away from black plastics for a while.
Someone Noticed Mastodon Teeth in Their Backyard
A New York homeowner saw what turned out to be mastodon teeth sticking up out of the ground, and discovered a completely intact mastodon jaw.
A Musician Bought a Seat for His Cello, But Air Canada Wouldn’t Let Him Use It
Musician Sheku Kanneh-Mason had to cancel a concert in Canada because the airline refused to give him a seat (that he’d reserved ahead of time!) for his prized instrument.