28 Bits of Trivia That Have Swarmed Upon Our Crops and Blotted Out the Sun
Thruthlings that might flourish into full-blown knowledge (if you’d let it!)
![28 Bits of Trivia That Have Swarmed Upon Our Crops and Blotted Out the Sun](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/1/0/2/971102_320x180.jpg)
They say that a fortune is made one dollar at a time. A marathon is run one step at a time. Mount Everest is climbed one foot at a time. You get it. Well, our own version of that credo is that a knowledge pool is built one fact at a time. So please, allow these hot facts to cool off in your burgeoning knowledge pool.
![Turns out, Prince Charles is actually related to the real-life Dracula. The real-life Dracula being, of course, Vlad the Impaler - Charles is his descendant, which means, among other things, that he owns real estate in Transylvania. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/1/4/960514.jpg)
![Disney was supposed to build another theme park near Washington, DC. They even secretly bought up 10,000 acres of land for it, but it didn't work out because the proposed theme - American history - was too controversial. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/1/3/960513.jpg)
![When the Romanian dictator visited Queen Elizabeth in 1978, she hid things. PCR RUMANIA VINYMON Specifically, she was afraid he'd nick whatever she had lying around - so she had the guest rooms stripped of all valuables. On his state visit to France, everything down to the bathroom fittings got stolen. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/1/2/960512.jpg)
![Steve Wozniak is really into Tetris, and he's so good, Nintendo Power didn't like it. Z He'd submit his Tetris high scores to Nintendo's magazine Nintendo Power as a kid, and they stopped running his name for a while - then he submitted the scores as Evets Kazniow, and they printed those. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/1/1/960511.jpg)
![Turns out, Jurassic Park was never supposed to have any CGI dinosaurs. They were going to be stop-motion - but two CGI artists made a CG model of a T-Rex and then put it on a video screen when producer Kathleen Kennedy showed up, and the rest is history. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/1/0/960510.jpg)
![In the movie Titanic, William Murdoch is a murderer - but he was a hero. In the movie, Murdoch (the First Officer) not just committed murder, but eventually killed himself, while in reality, he organized the launch of the lifeboats on the Titanic's starboard side and went down with the ship. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/0/9/960509.jpg)
![Stephen King's Carrie only exists thanks to King's wife, Tabitha. King threw it in the trash, but she eventually fished it out and said she wanted to know what would happen next in the story, and that he should keep writing it. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/0/8/960508.jpg)
![A fake diplomat saved thousands of Jews during World War II. Italian Giorgio Perlasca was very much for fascism until it turned, you know, fascistic. So after seeking refuge in neutral Spain, he pretended to be a diplomat and started working to give Hungarian Jews certificates of protection. Over 5,000 people were saved this way. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/0/7/960507.jpg)
![ROBERT SMALLS ESCAPED SLAVERY BY STEALING A CONFEDERATE SHIP AND BECAME A CONGRESSMAN Не was paid money for his heist, which he used to buy his former enslaver's house. Не served in the House of Representatives for South Carolina. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/0/6/960506.jpg)
![CLAY HENRY IV IS THE MAYOR OF LAJITAS, TEXAS. HE'S KNOWN FOR DRINKING BEER...AND BEING A GOAT. In the 1980s, a goat named Clay Henry won the mayoral race in the almost ghost town. Now, his descendants continue the family legacy. Talk about nepotism. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/0/5/960505.jpg)
![SUSANNA M. SALTER WAS THE FIRST WOMAN TO BE A U.S. MAYOR R...BECAUSE OF A SEXIST PRANK. A group of men tried to embarrass politically active women by putting a woman on the ticket in Argonia, Kansas. She received 2/3 of the votes and agreed to serve. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/0/4/960504.jpg)
![Sugar can keep wounds from festering. Sugar is a common treatment for wounds in some parts of the world, as it's pretty much the cheapest, most attainable remedy. It turns out the sweet stuff is great, as it removes moisture from the wound, killing the bacteria. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/0/3/960503.jpg)
![CRACKED.COM Platform shoes were created to stay away from crap. Long before they were a fashion statement, platform shoes were a statement that you didn't want your feet (or the hem of your clothes) covered with literal shit. Back when many streets weren't paved, the lil' stilts helped you stay away from the dust, mud, and animal feces.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/0/2/960502.jpg)
![No, Jules Verne did not predict nuclear subs. Verne's electric underwater boat from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea was quite prescient, but it wasn't nuclear. You're thinking of Disney's 1954 movie, made when nuclear submarines already existed. The original Nautilus worked with regular batteries fueled by sodium, which was extracted from seawater. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/0/1/960501.jpg)
![A molasses flood killed 21 people. The Great Molasses Flood wasn't some medieval, pseudo-mythical event - it happened in Boston in 1919. 2.3 million gallons of molasses burst from a tank, and the almost- biblical flood swallowed everything in its path. 21 people died and 150 were injured. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/5/0/0/960500.jpg)
![A video game lets you steal art for real (or at least NFTs). The Crypto Doctrine is as close as a game can get to art theft, in that you can steal actual NFTs, for real. It's only fitting that the NFTs were made without the consent of the original artists. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/9/9/960499.jpg)
![It was believed that murdered corpses bled in the presence of their killers. This belief that victims oozed cries of revenge didn't fully die out until the early 1800s. Cruentation, as the phenomenon was called, was even weighted more heavily than actual evidence of murder. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/9/8/960498.jpg)
![Making Gizmo work was a nightmare. Gizmo was supposed to be in just about 25 minutes of Gremlins, but then Steven Spielberg decided at the last minute that the fuzzball had to have a bigger part. So the puppeteers were left to improvise with a severely limited puppet that wasn't really made for basic stuff, like making it walk. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/9/7/960497.jpg)
![THE BEST MAN AT RAND PAUL'S WEDDING WAS HIS DAD. The Republican Senator from Kentucky chose his father, three-time Presidential candidate Ron Paul, as his best man. That had to have been a strange bachelor party. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/9/6/960496.jpg)
![MORE BOOKS HAVE BEEN WRITTEN ABOUT ABRAHAM LINCOLN THAN ANY OTHER PERSON, BESIDES JESUS CHRIST. Some 15,000 books have been written about the sixteenth President of the United States. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/9/5/960495.jpg)
![CRACKED.COM Marvel published a Dazzler/ Galactus romance. For a while in the '80s, Marvel tried to jam disco-themed Dazzler into a bunch of comics - including a What If? story where she becomes Galactus' herald, and they fall in love. The Big G (as she calls him) spares a planet of sentient plants at one point, because Dazzler has touched his heart.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/9/3/960493.jpg)
![CRACKED.COM Lara Croft's creator fought against Lara's oversexualization. Even after giving Lara huge boobs (by accident, allegedly), designer Toby Gard was unwilling to turn her into a sex object. Не has gone on record saying that he and the other devs refused a request by higher-ups to get Lara nude.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/9/4/960494.jpg)
![Betamax failed because Sony said no to porn. While not the only reason, Sony's refusal to allow their Betamax tapes to be used for adult movies was a big reason why they lost out to VHS. By the time the 1980s - - when - - - rolled around, erotic films accounted for more than half of video tape sales. 009.70 THIS SIDE FACES FORMARD JOSAV ЭНӀ HONOL 10N 00 200 du opinin CRACKED.COM VIDEOCASSETTE L-500](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/9/2/960492.jpg)
![Many Victorians were against saying Merry Christmas. To Victorians, the word merry entailed all manner of drunken debauchery. So the pious (and the stuffy) decided that wishing others a Happy Christmas was more Christ-like. The two greetings co-existed until the 1840s. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/9/1/960491.jpg)
![Bill Watterson turned down Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. Watterson is so dead-set against a movie or TV adaptation of Calvin and Hobbes, that he said no to Lucas and Spielberg in the '80s. Не has nothing against animation, and in fact he loves it - he just sees no benefit in giving that treatment to his strip. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/9/0/960490.jpg)
![BELUSHI! NO! THAT SAMURAI'S FOR REAL! Spider-Man fought a samurai along with John Belushi. The entire SNL cast showed up in a Marvel Team-Up comic in the 1970s - not as a cameo, but to actually team up with Spider-Man. The story leads to Belushi and Spidey battling a samurai together. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/8/9/960489.jpg)
![CRACKED.COM The director of Blade: Trinity hired a biker gang to protect him from Wesley Snipes. Snipes was really difficult to work with - even attempting to strangle director David S. Goyer once (at least according to Patton Oswalt). That night, Goyer approached a biker gang in a strip club and offered to pay for their drinks if they showed up on set the next day.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/8/8/960488.jpg)
![CRACKED.COM Katy Perry used to pretend she was Zooey Deschanel. Newly arrived in Los Angeles in 2002, a teen- aged Perry really enjoyed the club scene - and would often pass herself off as Deschanel to be admitted into clubs. I had no money, and I had no clout, I had nothing, and sometimes I would pose as to get into the club, Perry admitted in 2020.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/4/8/7/960487.jpg)