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30 Gleaming Bits of Trivia to Add to Your Trophy Case of Minutiae

Each fact is a step in the knowledge marathon. Carb up and pace yourself

30 Gleaming Bits of Trivia to Add to Your Trophy Case of Minutiae

January 25, 2024

You made it! Great job! You might think you’re at the starting line of this list, but getting here was the hard part. Here are 30 trophies that’ll no doubt impress your kids one day! We can see it now: “Yeah, son. This is my ‘Teddy Roosevelt loved boxing random dudes’ trophy. No big deal.”

30

Potatoes

GRACKED.COM People used to get poisoning from potatoes. Before modern screening processes, it wasn't uncommon for people to get solanine poisoning from potatoes. Solanine is one of the same ingredients that make deadly nightshade, well, deadly. Green potatoes tend to be chock-full of the nasty stuff. — Source

29

Doctor Manhattan

Doctor Manhattan's body model died trying to outrun a train. Greg Plitt was an actor, fitness model, and all-around badass. Dr. Manhattan's CGI body for 2009's Watchmen was modeled after his ripped physique. And it looks like he thought he had real superpowers: In 2015, he was mowed down by a train, apparently while trying to prove he was faster. (Не wasn't.) CRACKED.COM — Source

28

Teddy Roosevelt loved boxing with random people. Roosevelt liked fisticuffs so much that he had a boxing gym installed in the White House's basement, and would invite pretty much everyone to a bout. Не had to quit the sport after a military aide nearly blinded him in his left eye. CRACKED.COM — Source

27

Wonder Woman

GRACKED.COM Wonder Woman had two secret identities in an unproduced series. In a pilot made in 2011, Wonder Woman was Diana Themyscira, CEO of a company that managed her own superhero image. And she was also Diana Prince, an employee at her own company. Apparently, just being two people didn't keep her busy enough. — Source

26

Kodak

CRACKED.COM Kodak learned about secret nuclear tests by accident. In July 1945, Kodak started noticing that a sensitive film they made was fogged (covered with dark spots). As this was caused by radioactive contamination, they eventually figured out that the likely cause was that holy s#!t someone was setting off nuclear bombs. — Source

25

Jordan Peele

CRACKED.COM Jordan Peele quit acting because of The Emoji Movie. Being offered the role of the Poop Emoji gave Peele serious pause-and it got worse when Sir Patrick Stewart snatched the shitty part before Peele could make any decision. His reaction was, F*ck this, and has stuck to working mostly behind the cameras since. — Source

24

GRACKED.COM VI A lot of the Scots-language Wikipedia is written in English with a Scottish accent. A teen from North Carolina has been a major contributor to the Scots Wikipedia for years - even though he doesn't speak the language. Of course, Scots speakers realized something weird was going on- but no one listened to them. A Reddit post blew the whole thing open in 2020. — Source

23

Yakuza

Ramen was controlled by the Yakuza. Japan was a mess when World War II ended. In the face of food shortages and restrictions, the black market rushed in to feed the populace. Imported wheat was secretly diverted and turned into ramen, which was then sold out of illegal stalls- most of which were under Yakuza control. CRACKED.COM — Source

22

CRACKED.COM A mafia drug dealer was caught because he became a YouTuber. After hiding out for years in the Dominican Republic, Marc Feren Claude Biart decided to open a YouTube channel to share his cooking skills with the world. Of course, he never showed his face - but he neglected to hide his distinctive tattoos, leading authorities straight to him. — Source

21

Nuclear bombs have made old shipwrecks incredibly valuable. Due to radioactive pollution from nuclear explosions, metal produced after World War II has impurities that makes it unfit for delicate electronics or lab-grade equipment. This has given rise to an entire shady industry, which loots metal from ships which sank before 1945. CRACKED.COM — Source

20

CRACKED.COM Turbans helped African Americans avoid racism. Some black people in Jim Crow America got to wrapping pieces of cloth around their heads to pass as Indians, who were exempted from the arbitrary segregation laws. The first black man to have his own TV show did so by donning a turban and calling himself Korla Pandit. — Source

19

Long Range Acoustic Devices

CRACKED.COM NZ BOYS COM West Police use weaponized sound. Sound weapons aren't just a science-fiction technology. Police forces sometimes disperse crowds with a device called LRAD (Long Range Acoustic Device), which hits you with a beam of sound of around 137 dB. The effects of this sonic shotgun include nausea, vertigo, and of course, hearing loss. — Source

18

A tree in Georgia is a landowner. A large white oak in Athens, Clarke County is known as The Tree That Owns Itself, as it was reportedly bequeathed the patch of land it's planted on in the 19th century. Now, it's not exactly legal for a tree to own property in Athens, but no one has ever challenged it. CRACKED.COM — Source

17

world of warcraft had a bona fide pandemic in 2005. The Corrupted Blood Plague wasn't some storyline in WoW-it was an actual digital plague. A negative effect that was supposed to be local and temporary became highly contagious due to a glitch, and spread throughout the entire game. CRACKED.COM — Source

16

slender Man caused a real murder attempt. In a story that sounds like a creepypasta (but actually happened), two 12-year-old girls from Wisconsin stabbed a friend in 2014, in an attempt to recreate the Slender Man mythology. The friend survived, and her attackers were sentenced to years in mental health hospitals. CRACKED.COM — Source

15

Army of the Dead

LV.00 VOLUNTEER Army of the Dead was going to include zombie rape. An early iteration of the script (back when Zack Snyder was producing, but not directing) had male zombies raping human women, producing hybrid offspring. Thankfully, Snyder came to the realization that wasn't something the zombie genre was lacking. CRACKED.COM — Source

14

Tibetan monks can raise their body temperature with their minds. CRACKED.COM A 1982 Harvard study con- firmed practitioners of g-tummo yoga demon- strated the ability to raise the temperature of differ- ent parts of their bodies through meditation alone. — Source

13

The London Underground has its own subspecies of mosquito. GO UA PICCADILLY CIRCUS CRACKED.COM The mosquitos live exclu- sively in the stations and tunnels. They were first re- ported during World War II, when people who used Tube stations as bomb shelters learned that the depths held plenty of pests. — Source

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12

The Amazon River

There are no bridges on the entire 4300 mile length of the Amazon river. CRACKED COM During the rainy season, the river rises thirty feet, and crossings that were once three miles wide can balloon to thir- ty miles in a matter of weeks. — Source

11

The largest hailstone ever documented fell in Aurora, Nebraska in 2003. CRACKED.COM The National Climate Extremes Committee documented the hail size that fell in that storm, with many being about the size of a soft ball. One particular hailstone found from that storm was just a little smaller than a standard soccer ball. — Source

10

Vincent Price took a flat fee for his work on 'Thriller.' CRACKED.COM When Vincent Price agreed to do the voice work for 'Thriller,' he was given a choice between taking a percentage of the album proceeds or being paid a flat $20K. Не chose the $20K. — Source

9

Smedley Butler

One of the most decorated marines became an anti-war advocate. CRACKED.COM Smedley Butler wrote War is a Racket about war profiteering. Не said the best he could do was to operate his racket in 3 districts. I operated on 3 continents. — Source

8

A drawing of a penis from Andy Warhol was snuck onto the moon. CRACKED.COM The small ceramic wafer, dubbed the Moon Museum, was snuck onto the Moon during the Apollo 12 mission, and contains 6 drawings, two of which include a penis drawn by Andy Warhol and a single straight line. — Source

7

McDonald's character Grimace was originally introduced as Evil Grimace. CRACKED.COM Evil Grimace had four arms and would steal milk- shakes. The greatest trick Evil Grimace ever played was convincing the world he didn't exist. What do we really know about the good Grimace, anyway? — Source

6

Short sleepers function the same off of 4-6 hours of sleep as a typical individual getting 8. CRACKED.COM Natural short sleepers re- mained a mystery until 2009, when a study dis- covered that people who had inherited a particular mutation in a gene called DEC2 averaged only 6.25 hours of sleep per night. — Source

5

In order to quickly identify the training of their mules in a herd, the US Army shaved bells into the tail. CRACKED.COM One bell meant the animal could pack, two meant it could pack & drive, and three meant it was also broken to ride. — Source

4

WEIRD WORLD A school teacher tried to use an image of Bin Laden as the Prophet Muhammad. This happened at the All Saints Academy in Dunstable and the teacher was, of course, suspended. CRACKED.COM — Source

3

WEIRD WORLD A menacing gigantic bear turned out to be a trio of black bears. People around Lake Tahoe have been terrorized by what they thought was one giant 500lb bear nicknamed Hank the Tank - but, it turns out, Hank is actually three black bears. CRACKED.COM — Source

2

WEIRD WORLD The Japanese prime minister suggested that Japan hosts nuclear weapons. US nuclear weapons, that is - and the irony is truly too colossal to even contemplate. CRACKED.COM — Source

1

WEIRD WORLD Jarrett Allen says he had to get an iPhone purely because of other people on his team. Не plays for the Cleveland Cavaliers, and apparently they wouldn't let him be in the group chat otherwise - they wanted everyone's messages in the chat to be blue. CRACKED.COM — Source

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