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36 Bits of Trivia to Fertilize Your Brainstem

Helping your brains grow up big and strong

36 Bits of Trivia to Fertilize Your Brainstem

January 26, 2024

Aw, you little brains are growing up so fast. It seems like only yesterday, we were nurturing you with milk-based facts in the nursery. Now that you’re on solids, remember to eat all of your broccoli facts or you can’t have any ice cream facts.

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The title of Asimov's I, Robot was swiped from a different work. AMAZING VER ССК EMPRESS ЗАМЦАЯТ 20 KS JOHN STOPIES AMAZING CONFESSION I. ROBOT DISPER Asimov wanted to call his robot book Mind and Iron, but his editor just reused the title of a story by author Otto Binder, thinking it was punchier. Asimov didn't want to do this, but eventually the editor had his way. CRACKED.COM — Source

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CRACKED.COM The Sound of Music clashed with Salzburg over swastikas. The people of Salzburg weren't Nazi sympathizers! local authorities said when asked for permission to drape the city in swastikas for the movie. So the filmmakers said they'd just use newsreels from the time - which showed the people of Salzburg very much cheering on the Nazis. A compromise was quickly reached. — Source

34

Pepsi tried to buy a song's title. T EPS BLUE When the popular calypso song Rum and Coca-Cola was about to hit the U.S. in the '40s, Pepsi offered songwriter Morey Amsterdam a lot of money for changing it to Rum and Pepsi-Cola. Amsterdam contacted Соса-Соӏа and got a counter-offer, and in the end, he made big bucks for exactly zero work. CRACKED.COM — Source

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CRACKED.COM THAT WILL STOP YOU COLD, OFFICERS! Mr. Freeze was cured in his first appearance. Mr. Zero was a one-shot villain in a 1959 comic - by the story's end, Batman cured him of his freak cold dependency. The character as we know him was defined by Adam West's series, with Batman: The Animated Series giving him his tragic backstory three decades later. — Source

32

Miraculous fasting girls were a big attraction in Victorian times. As Netflix wasn't a thing in the 19th century, people would entertain themselves by visiting fasting girls, who were said to live for years on end without eating anything. (As the girls weren't being watched by visitors 24/7, it isn't hard to figure out how this miracle happened.) CRACKED.COM — Source

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36 Bits of Trivia to Fertilize Your Brainstem — Source

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Oil doesn't come from dinosaurs. Maybe some oil does have a teeny-tiny bit of dinosaur, but by and large, the stuff comes from microbes in the sea. The dino-oil connection comes from the Sinclair Oil and Refining Corporation, which used to sponsor paleontological research and had a dinosaur as its mascot. CRACKED.COM — Source

29

CRACKED.COM Football used to be a deadly game. 18 people died while playing football in 1905 alone. Predictably, there were calls to get the game banned. President Teddy Roosevelt got personally involved, and got colleges to change the rules and make helmets mandatory. — Source

28

Brad Pitt threatened to kill Harvey Weinstein. In 1995, Weinstein tried to, well, get all Weinstein on an up-and-coming Gwyneth Paltrow. When her then- boyfriend Brad Pitt found out, he confronted Weinstein about it - and by confronted, we mean he told him, If you ever make her feel uncomfortable again, I'll kill you. CRACKED.COM — Source

27

CRACKED.COM The Emmys apparently didn't believe Mindy Kaling produced The Office. When The Office was nominated for an Emmy, Kaling (and only Kaling) was asked to justify why she had to be included. She needed to fill out a form, write an essay about her contributions, and get the other (male, white) producers to vouch for her. — Source

26

Steven Spielberg did Jaws because the original director flunked basic sea biology. Director Dick Richards was fired because he kept calling the shark a whale during planning meetings. Let this be a lesson, kids: Don't sleep through class, and you may one day change movies forever. CRACKED.COM — Source

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CRACKED.COM Angie Bowie almost played Black widow in the 1970s. Bowie went straight to Stan Lee to secure the rights to the character (and Daredevil). The suits were designed by the same person who made her husband David Bowie's costumes. Too bad that not a single TV network was interested. — Source

24

There's a devil in star wars because money was short. George Lucas wasn't happy with the amount of weird aliens in the Mos Eisley cantina, and wanted more. But the budget for reshoots was very limited, and make-up artist Rick Baker had to work with what he had - including a demon's head he made for a different movie (which didn't happen). CRACKED.COM — Source

23

CRACKED.COM winston churchill got a doctor's note to drink in the U.S. during Prohibition. Churchill was hit by a car in 1931, while visiting the U.S. - and as part of his recovery, a doctor prescribed him alcoholic beverages. Especially at mealtimes, the doctor's note pointed out. Well, what was he gonna do if he needed booze to recuperate, right? — Source

22

CRACKED.COM Frozen exists because Hans christian Andersen was obsessed with an opera singer. Merely a couple weeks after meeting the much younger Jenny Lind, Andersen asked her to marry him-and she tactfully rejected him. Instead of gracefully moving on, Andersen wrote The Snow Queen, about an evil, cold-hearted woman. — Source

21

Jennifer coolidge pretended to be her own twin (to date two different guys). While on a tropical vacation, Coolidge met two friends she fancied - and since she didn't feel like choosing, she pretended to have a twin sister and dated both for a couple weeks. I don't know if I would have the guts to do that now, she confessed. CRACKED.COM — Source

20

IL SEBAS Li'l sebastian was based on a real horse. The writers of Parks and Recreation don't remember who came up with the little horse - but they do remember the inspiration came from Einstein, the Smallest Stallion, a particularly tiny miniature horse born in New Hampshire in 2010. CRACKED.COM — Source

19

John Krasinski owns the secret santa teapot from The office. According to Krasinski, the show's prop master shipped him several of Jim's props after the show wrapped up - including the teapot that was a landmark in Jim and Pam's relationship. CRACKED COM — Source

18

Bill Murray improvised the final speech in scrooged (despite being asked not to). Co-writer Mitch Glazer begged Murray to stick to the script (which had been already heavily reworked to please the star). But Murray being Murray, he didn't do that, and went on an emotional, big-actor- moment tirade instead. Glazer thought that Murray was having a breakdown. CRACKED.COM — Source

17

cruella de vil is implied to be demonic in the book. Dodie Smith's original novel details Cruella's backstory as the descendant of a mass murderer, who might or might not be an actual devil (complete with a tail). That sounds way more punk than Emma Stone's Cruella, doesn't it? CRACKED.COM — Source

16

Frank Reynolds could have been played by Ray Liotta. Danny DeVito wasn't the first choice for the trash patriarch in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia - Ray Liotta was. We got very serious about , Glenn Howerton has said. Eventually, however, they realized that DeVito made sense as Frank, and were able to bring him onboard. CRACKED.COM — Source

15

GRACKED.COM OLIOR Farmers are forced to hack their own tractors. Ridiculously restrictive license agreements require owners to haul their increasingly computerized tractors to a dealer for repairs, even for the smallest problems. Farmers often rely on black market software to jailbreak (and be able to fix) their own goddamn equipment. — Source

14

CRACKED.COM The U.S. government used hundreds of Nazis as spies. After World War II, America didn't just employ German scientists - it came out in 2014 that at least 1,000 actual Nazis served as spies for the U.S. during the Cold War. For their (largely worthless) services, the government would often shield them from prosecution for their Nazi crimes. — Source

13

CRACKED.COM Sharks are older than trees. The first plants we'd call trees appeared about 350 million years ago. By then, sharks had been swimming in the world's oceans for several tens million years. (Still, these early sharks were very different from what we know today.) — Source

12

CRACKED.COM Restaurants are going fully virtual. Your Chuck Е. Cheese delivery order may not come from Chuck Е. Cheese - it's likely to come from a place that's only a kitchen, with no dining area or waitstaff. Many of these ghost kitchens run several brands at the same time. — Source

11

The inventor of cubicles, Robert Propst, wasn't terribly proud of them. EXIT THE Не publicly regretted his own contribution to monolithic insanity before he'd died in 2000. CRACKED.COM — Source

10

Henry VIII was so paranoid that he traveled with a locksmith. It was maybe kind of justified for his situation - he was so afraid of getting assassinated that he'd have the locksmith put a special lock on the room he slept in when he visited somewhere. CRACKED.COM — Source

9

An elite French counter-terror unit uses an odd technique in its initiation program. A current member of GIGN, in body armor, has to put a clay pigeon (a fake target) on their center of mass, and the new teammate has to shoot it with their revolver from 15 yards away - it's called a trust shot. CRACKED.COM — Source

8

Apparently, JRR Tolkien might officially become a saint in the near future. Several British Catholic priests started the process of making him a saint in 2017, and a mass for the Cause of Beatification of Tolkien was performed in Oxford that year. CRACKED.COM — Source

7

One man invented both aspirin and heroin within a two-week span. The man was Felix Hoffmann, a German chemist who worked for Bayer, and the inventions in question happened in 1897. CRACKED.COM — Source

6

We don't know if the Universe is infinite or if multiverses exist Our Universe is only 13.8 billion years old so anyhing farther than 13.8 billion light years apart would be unknowable. CRACKED.COM — Source

5

Dark energy makes up 68% of the Universe Dark matter makes up another 27%. We don't know much about either. Everything else (including Earth and everything observed with instruments) makes up only 5%. CRACKED.COM — Source

4

There are two trillion galaxies (that we know of) As recently as 2016, we realized our previous estimates were 10 times too low. Over 90% of the galaxies in the current estimate have yet to be studied. The Milky Way is looking trivial now. CRACKED.COM — Source

3

The Sun is only one among 300 sextillion stars. Our solar system revolves around the incredibly insignificant star that's one in 300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. And those are just the estimated stars in the observable universe. CRACKED.COM — Source

2

The Sun takes up 99.8% of our solar system's mass. The yellow dwarf star (an average size for a star) is the most significant object in our solar system. Its gravity holds the whole thing together. CRACKED.COM — Source

1

There might be six billion Earth-like planets in our galaxy Earth is pretty special to us, but the estimate is based on rocky, Earth-sized planets with a similar distance to a Sun-like star. CRACKED.COM — Source

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