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34 Everyday Objects That Humanity Can’t Seem to Wrap Its Collective Mind Around

January 13, 2024

Whenever you make the mistake of stepping outside of your apartment, you’re immediately engulfed by confusing things. There are precious few things you can safely assume you understand correctly, and after this list, there will be even fewer. Sorry about that!

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34

To Christians, the ichthys fish represents Jesus. Before that, it was a vagina. One of the names given to the pre-Jesus Jesus Fish is the vesica pisces (vessel of the fish), and it was used as a symbol of every female fertility god ever, from Atargatis (the Syrian fertility goddess) and Aphrodite/Venus (the goddess of love and sex) to the pagan Great Mother goddess (specifically, her vulva). CRACKED.COM http://www. religioustolerance.org/chr_symb.htm — Source

33

The heart symbol isn't shaped like an actual heart. But it is shaped like birth control. If you trace the heart symbol back as far as you can, you wind up finding it on old Roman coins (above). That's the seedpod of the silphium plant, an herb so prized for its birth control capabilities that the Romans drove it to extinction. The Romans themselves thought the seeds looked like testicles. CRACKED.COM http://www. slate .com/articles/news_and_politics/recycled/2007/02/the_shape_of_my_heart.html — Source

32

The peace sign seems almost naively optimistic. It was designed to look defeated. British graphic designer Gerald Holtom created the peace sign by combining the semaphore symbols for N and D, to stand for nuclear disarmament. Не says it's also meant to look like a human being in despair, stretching his arms out and downward in desperation and defeat. CRACKED.COM http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7292252.stm — Source

31

A barber pole is a candy-striped symbol of small-town America. It's based on a bloody bandage. OZ The pole got its start during the Middle Ages, when barbers doubled as doctors. A common practice at the time was bloodletting, where a patient would grasp a bandaged pole, and the barber would cut into their wrists and let the blood (and evil spirits) run down the bandage. That's what the pole represents. CRACKED.COM http://wordinfo.info/unit/3364/ip:17 — Source

30

A rabbit's foot is an old-timey good luck charm. They were originally seen as witch feet. Superstitious weirdos thought that rabbits were witches in disguise. So to them, catching a rabbit and lopping off its foot was catching a witch and crippling it. The earliest references to the rabbit's foot legend detail ways to maximize the evil power of the foot before you chop it off and wear it. CRACKED.COM M Bill Ellis, 2004 Lucifer Ascending: The Occult in Folklore and Popular Culture — Source

29

Mistletoe makes people feel romantic. It should make them nervous. Mistletoe is actually the product of two traditions. In the first, the Viking god Baldur was killed by a mistletoe arrow, so it must always remain suspended in the air. In the second, Celtic Druids thought the berries looked like sperm, so they'd gleefully harvest mistletoe as the testicles of their sacred oaks. So, mistletoe represents death and castration. CRACKED.COM http://www.bartleby com/81/9645.html Uewellyn's Sabbats Almanac, 2009. — Source

28

Uncle Sam is a symbol of the U.S. government. Не was once a caricature of it. Uncle Sam dates back much earlier than the recruitment posters from the Great War. The phrase Uncle Sam was a derogatory term for U.S. officials during the War of 1812. When Sam himself started showing up in political cartoons, it was to depict the American government as bumbling jackasses. CRACKED.COM http://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences-and-law/ political-science-and-government/us-government/uncle-sam — Source

27

The hammer and sickle stand for Marxism and communism. i And also + x gender equality. ((i) At the time of its design, the hammer and sickle stood for worker-peasant alliance, with the hammer standing for the industrial proletariat, and the sickle representing the peasantry. Over time it took on a gender-based meaning in the Soviet Union: The sickle stood for women, and the hammer for men. CRACKED.COM — Source

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25

When you see a pentagram, you might think of evil. But it's a symbol of protection. Although the five-pointed star in a circle has long been associated with Satanism and the occult, it's actually worn as a ward against evil. Even an inverted pentagram, which has a much more negative connotation, represents an individual's desire to face and conquer darkness. CRACKED.COM http://www.angeffire.com/id/robpurvis/pentagram.html — Source

24

A lot of people think this is the Confederate flag. It isn't, and never was. For the first two years of the Civil War, the Confederate army marched under a flag called The Stars And Bars, a flag that looked a lot like the flag of the 13 original U.S. colonies. They eventually switched to one with the iconic blue X on red, but only as the corner of a white (for white supremacy) flag. CRACKED.COM John M. Coski, 2009. The Confederate Battle Flag: America's Most Embattled Emblem. — Source

23

Think a shamrock is a four-leaf clover? i It isn't. It has three leaves. While a four-leaf clover is widely considered a sign of good luck, the traditional Irish shamrock has always had three leaves. Legend has it that St. Patrick used the shamrock's three leaves as an allegory for the holy trinity being three parts of one whole. CRACKED.COM Roger Homan, 200 The Art of the Sublime: Principles of Christian Art and Architecture. — Source

22

These days mermaids are seen as playful and sweet. They used to mean death by seduction. In mythology, mermaids are brutal sociopaths who lure sailors to their deaths. According to scholars, they sing an irresistibly sweet song that fills the body and soul with a fatal lethargy. Sailors who crossed paths with a mermaid would become so obsessed that they would crash into the rocks and die. CRACKED.COM Jane Ellen Harrison, 1922 Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion. — Source

21

Christian children hang stockings at Christmas. They do because According of to legend, prostitution. in so the 4th century there was a poor man who couldn't afford a dowry for his three daughters. They would have to resort to prostitution to survive. But Saint Nicholas came to their house at night to anonymously bring them gold. The door was locked, so he snuck down the chimney and put the gold in the stockings that were drying on the hearth. CRACKED.COM www.smithsonianmag g.com/arts-culture/the-legend-of-the-christmas-stocking-160854441/7no-ist — Source

20

You might think an inverted cross is satanic. But it's the symbol of the first Pope. When St. Peter was martyred by crucifixion, he was said to have requested to be crucified upside down because he didn't feel worthy of dying the same way as Jesus. As a result, many Catholics actually consider the inverted cross to be a more acceptable display of faith than an uninverted one. CRACKED.COM https://en wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_of_St._Peter — Source

19

Guy Fawkes is an icon for toppling theocracy. But he was trying to install one. Anarchists use Fawkes as an icon because of his attempt to blow up Parliament in order to destabilize the British government. But he wasn't trying to destroy an evil theocracy; he was trying to create one. Fawkes wanted to blow up the Protestant revolution and restore Catholic domination. CRACKED.COM http://www.history com/news/guy-fawkes-day-a-brief-history — Source

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17

Every rocker knows about the devil horns sign. It's actually for protection. The devil horns hand gesture was first associated with metal music by Ronnie James Dio of Black Sabbath. Не flashed the sign at the audience because it's a blessing his grandmother used, to ward off the evil eye. In other words, it's meant to flip off the devil, not tell him you think he's cool. CRACKED.COM http //news bbc.co.uk/2hi8887002.stm — Source

16

The pink triangle is second only to the rainbow as a symbol of support for sexual diversity. It got its start in Nazi Germany. The Nazis categorized people in concentration camps with colored triangles, and for gay men those triangles were pink-and also larger than triangles marking other groups. This was so that gays could be spotted at a distance and singled out for abuse. CRACKED.COM http://www.thepinktriangle. com/history/symbol.html — Source

15

In the 1910s, people thought kids who liked movies would be sickly adults. DRAPERITE since LACE CONTAINS TURE. IST RUGE BOB THE K CLASS adidas PESOS 10 DONE NADD FOR REEDCRAF Apparently, going to the theater often would rob them of exercise needed for healthy growth. CRACKED.COM — Source

14

In 1878 the New York Times published an editorial that called Thomas Edison's invention, the phonograph, a depraved ingenuity. They claimed that the invention would destroy society because everyone would be too scared about being recorded to trust anyone else. CRACKED COM — Source

13

CRACKED.COM In 18th century Europe, the introduction of house numbers was often met with protest, destruction, and vandalism. 52 The numbers weren't seen as a convenience, but as a tool for military conscription, taxation, and government surveillance. — Source

12

The first privately used indoor toilets SCARED THE CRAP OUT OF PEOPLE, They were afraid that having a direct connection to city sewers would allow sewer gasses to waft into people's homes, spreading disease and even death. CRACKED.COM — Source

11

Computers, the terror of the '80s. People were afraid of computers to the point that they refused to touch or talk about the machines. CRACKED.COM — Source

10

When the telephone was invented, people were scared that it would attract evil spirits and the Devil. The invention was so poorly received that newly constructed phone lines would often be sabotaged and stolen. CRACKED.COM — Source

9

CRACKED.COM Many people who used elevators in the 1800s were so anxious that they reported feeling extreme dizziness and nausea. — Source

8

Horseless death-machines were so scary back in the 1800s, that England had a law requiring someone to carry a red flag in front of them at all times CRACKED.COM when they were driven. The law was revoked shortly after people realized it totally defeated the purpose of driving. — Source

7

100 Many real musicians (whatever that means) thought that the rise of autotune was going to kill music, somehow. When the tool's popularity was hitting new heights in the '00s, there was a contingent of artists concerned that the technology was going to make music creation too accessible, putting their livelihoods at risk. The industry somehow survived. CRACKED.COM Death Cab For Cutie even wore ribbons to raise awareness of the technology when they attended the Grammy Awards in 2009. — Source

6

When hybrid cars became mainstream, people feared that their electromagnetic fields were dangerous for people to be around. While no side effects were ever confirmed by medical science, many people complained of them, and some spent hundreds of dollars on home testing machines to prove how strong the EMFs were. CRACKED.COM — Source

5

In the first few decades after email was first introduced, people believed that it could be detrimental to the users' IQ. A British study in 2005 even claimed that using emails hurt your IQ more than smoking pot. CRACKED.COM — Source

4

The hi-tech campaign to relocate books to Google and replace books with Kindles is, in its essence, a deportation of the literary culture to a kind of easily monitored concentration camp of ideas... This death of intellectual privacy was also a dream of the Nazis. And when I hear the term Kindle, I think not of imaginations fired but of crematoria lit. -Alan Kaufman, comparing Kindles to the Holocaust in 2011. kindle GRAGKED.COM — Source

3

CRACKED COM Social networks got a lot of crap when they first became a thing, but the most ridiculous case against them had to be the one where they were claimed to cause cancer. S Linked in VK skypo foursquare LIVEJOURNAL You Tube vimeo L OS facebook t stagram my B twitter Blogger g+ fc + flickr P Bēhanc tumblr. Dr Aric Sigman claimed in velp Like his 2009 paper that social networks reduce face-to- face contact, which (somehow) contributes to health problems such as cancer and heart diseases. — Source

2

Play In the early days of the Nintendo DS people were afraid that predators could use the Pictochat feature to prey on children. The fears RI aver were unfounded, and no incidents of child abduction enabled by Pictochat users have ever been reported. love - la er 2 1 محمد - - - CRACKED.COM — Source

1

People were afraid that electricity would make women and kids targets. Roaming murderers and rapists would see any women and children in a house with the lights on, the thinking went, and attack at once. CRACKED.COM — Source

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