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They’re factually delicious

30 Random Bits of Trivia That Are a Part of This Balanced Breakfast

February 24, 2024

Disclaimer: Trivia tidbits alone have no detectable nutritional value. But if you eat a banana while you read them, you’ll have a whole banana’s worth of vitamins and minerals floating around inside of you.

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30

CRACKED CGI: MORE EXPENSIVE THAN AN AIRLINER Christopher Nolan explained that they crashed a real 747 instead of using CG for the set-piece in spy-thriller Tenet, revealing that it was more efficient to buy a real plane than to use miniatures or CGI. — Source

29

CRACKED PET FOOD REVOLUTION: NO MORE WHITE POOPS. In the 1970s and '80s, white dog poop was a common sight due to an overabundance of calcium in pet food. Today, pet food brands have changed their formulas to include more fiber and less calcium, resulting in healthier, more-naturally looking waste. — Source

28

CRACKED THREE BAGS OF GOLD: THE UNTOLD STORY OF SANTA'S GENEROSITY. Saint Nicholas of Bari, better known to many of us as Santa Claus or Father Christmas, is symbolized by three golden balls representing a dowry of three bags of gold he gave to three girls. A painting attributed to Giovanni Battista Cima da Conegliano, The Virgin and Child with Saints is an example of this. — Source

27

CRACKED LA'S PALM TREES AREN'T NATIVE. Palm trees have become an iconic symbol of Los Angeles, having been imported to the region in the late 1700s and popularized during the Victorian era. In the 1930s, a large effort was made to plant 40,000 palms as part of an unemployment relief effort, cementing their place in the city's identity. — Source

26

CRACKED AN EVIL COMPUTER WAS ELECTED MAYOR. A team from the University of Michigan found a flaw in the code of a new online voting system in Washington D.C., and exploited it to elect a malevolent computer program mayor (and other fictional characters to other positions). It took two days for officials to realize they had been hacked. ULL 100110010000100000 1 00 00101011101000110 011001010111001001 010000001000001011 0 11 00000000111001101101010 0001101 1010000010110 0110110111101101110 11 0011101 0 110100101101110011 111010001100100111 11 01000016 0011 1111001000000110001 110011000010111001001 10010 111 0110010000100000011 110001101100101001000 011 1 0 11011000010010000 01100100000011011100 . 10010 TTOOTTOOTTOTOOTOLT 11000110111010101101 1015 TTTOTTOTTOOOOTOOTOTO C 1100110010101110010 1 1000 — Source

25

CRACKED GERALD FORD'S GREAT ALAMO BEEF. Former President Gerald Ford committed a food faux pas during an April 1976 visit to the Alamo by picking up a plate of tamales still shuck-wrapped, but was quickly corrected by a member of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas. — Source

24

CRACKED THREE STARS, ONE SYSTEM, 4.25 LIGHT-YEARS AWAY: ALPHA CENTAURI. Alpha Centauri is the closest star system to Earth, consisting of three stars: Alpha Centauri A, Alpha Centauri B, and Proxima Centauri. Proxima Centauri is the closest star to Earth, located 4.25 light-years away, while Alpha Centauri A and В are a binary pair located 4.35 light-years away. They orbit a common center of gravity every 80 years. — Source

23

CRACKED DENNIS THE MENACE HAS A REAL-LIFE TWIN. Two comic strips titled Dennis the Menace were released on the same day in 1951, one in the UK and one in the US, both created by different people unaware of the other's work. The UK version was published in The Beano and was drawn by David Law, while the US version was created by Hank Ketcham and featured a five-year-old boy in Wichita, Kansas. — Source

22

CRACKED 350 ANCESTORS, 700 YEARS AGO: THE SURPRISING HISTORY OF ASHKENAZI JEWS. The modern-day Ashkenazi community emerged from a population bottleneck of approximately 350 individuals in central Europe about 700 years ago, and their ancestry is a mixture of European and Middle Eastern descent. — Source

21

CRACKED STEPHEN KING: ADDICTED NOVELIST? Stephen King admitted he had a substance abuse problem and his friends and family staged an intervention to confront him with the evidence of his addiction. Не wrote his novel Cujo in 1981, but barely remembers the experience. — Source

20

Drinking

CRACKED ALCOHOL CONSUMPTION: THE FEW, THE PROUD, THE HEAVY DRINKERS. People consume alcohol in a skewed distribution, with a tiny minority responsible for almost all the nation's drinking, a pattern that has remained more or less a constant over many decades, and holds for other countries too. — Source

19

CRACKED JOHN VON NEUMANN: MAN OR MACHINE? John von Neumann was a pioneering figure in modern computing, having developed the Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer (ENIAC) and its first program, a study of the feasibility of the hydrogen bomb. His incredible intellect and photographic memory stunned other mathematicians, with Nobel Laureate Hans Bethe wondering if he was a species superior to man. — Source

18

CRACKED RADIOACTIVE SILVER MAY SAVE THE PLANET. Enrico Fermi and his team of scientists discovered that neutron bombardment of silver could increase its radioactivity, and Fermi went on to hypothesize that the splitting of a uranium atom with a neutron could result in a self-perpetuating chain reaction that would produce tremendous energy. — Source

17

CRACKED MICROSOFT AND JOHNSON & JOHNSON ARE THE ONLY MEMBERS OF AN EXCLUSIVE CLUB. AAA ratings are given to government debt and companies' corporate bonds, and the global credit crisis of 2008 resulted in a number of companies losing their AAA rating. Only Microsoft and J&J hold the rating outright as of September 2022. Microsoft — Source

16

CRACKED TATTOOED ACTORS: GET A RELEASE OR HIDE IT. Actors with visible tattoos must provide a release from their tattoo artist(s) before they can appear on camera, or else their tattoos must be covered up. This is due to a lawsuit between Mike Tyson and his tattoo artist, which set a precedent for the entertainment industry's approach to actor's tattoos. DISE IRON — Source

15

Wayne Gretzky

CRACKED WAYNE GRETZKY'S '80S WERE RECORD-BREAKING. Wayne Gretzky dominated the NHL in the 1980s, setting records for most points (2,857) and goals scored (894). HOWE 1850

14

CRACKED 96 BAGS OF POOP ON THE MOON. The Apollo landers left behind a variety of items, including two golf balls and 96 bags of human waste. Astrobiologists hope to one day study this detritus for information on the survival of microorganisms in space. — Source

13

USPS

CRACKED USPS HAS LET PEOPLE BE SANTA CLAUS FOR OVER A CENTURY. USPS Operation Santa® allows people to adopt and respond to letters sent from children across the country, fulfilling their holiday wishes. The tradition has been running for over 100 years with a deadline of December 10th each year. — Source

12

CRACKED THE DOUBLE HELIX WAS DISCOVERED BY USING LSD. Francis Crick, the Nobel Prize-winning father of modern genetics, used LSD to help him deduce the double helix structure of DNA, and was an inspiration for a multimillion pound drug factory in Wales. — Source

11

CRACKED 'WALK LIKE AN EGYPTIAN' WAS BANNED AFTER 9/11. Three days after the 9/11 attacks, media corporation Clear Channel Communications sent a memo to its radio stations with a list of songs deemed lyrically questionable and insensitive for airplay. The memorandum included both overtly anti-American music as well as some seemingly innocuous tunes like 'Walk Like An Egyptian' by The Bangles. — Source

10

CRACKED A MAN (BRIEFLY) ESCAPED JUSTICE VIA PLASTIC SURGERY. Tatsuya Ichihashi wrote a book detailing his 2-and-a-half years on the run after being accused of rape and murder, during which he changed his appearance with extreme measures such as scissoring off part of his lower lip. Не was eventually arrested when police were tipped off about him visiting plastic surgery clinics. — Source

9

CRACKED THE ASOH DEFENSE -A FRANK ADMISSION OF GUILT. The passengers and crew of Japan Air Lines Flight 2 experienced the perfect water landing when their DC-8 plane descended into the foggy bay south of the intended runway on November 22, 1968, miraculously without a single injury beyond a bloody nose. I f--ked up, Captain Kohei Asoh said, as he accepted the blame and preserved his career. COAST GUARD — Source

8

CRACKED TAKING PICTURES MAY SCREW UP YOUR BRAIN. Taking photos may not be the perfect memory-retention tool we think it is, as research suggests that taking too many pictures can actually harm our brain's ability to remember moments. — Source

7

CRACKED TOOTHLESS NIGHTMARES UNITE US ALL. Dreams are often bizarre and terrifying, but a recent study shows that dreamers around the world have something in common: snakes! Losing teeth is also popular - especially among northern countries. — Source

6

Benjamin Franklin

CRACKED BENJAMIN FRANKLIN CRAFTED HIS OWN WEIRD MUSICAL INSTRUMENT. The glass armonica is an instrument made of tuned and color-coded bowls that were spun with a foot pedal. Its sound was so beautiful it was said to be the music of angels. — Source

5

CRACKED THE GOLDEN RASPBERRY AWARDS TAKE BACK WHAT WAS NEVER THEIRS TO GIVE. The Razzies have rescinded Shelley Duvall's Worst Actress nomination for The Shining, citing Stanley Kubrick's mistreatment of her on set. Kubrick may be overrated, they said, but they're willing to admit their mistake in nominating Duvall. — Source

4

CRACKED THE BRUSSELS SPROUTS REVOLUTION! Once despised, Brussels sprouts have experienced a stunning resurgence in popularity, due to a Dutch scientist's discovery of their less-bitter varieties and the increased culinary demand for them. — Source

3

CRACKED A COURT DECISION THAT WILL SHAPE WESTERN HUNTING? In 2021, four hunters faced a criminal trespass charge for corner crossing public land parcels in Wyoming; their case may have implications on access to millions of acres. — Source

2

CRACKED TIGER TAKES ON POACHER IN A DEADLY DUEL. In the Russian Far East, Amur tigers, which can weigh over 500 pounds and jump over a basketball hoop, often have to compete with humans for the same prey, but one poacher met a grisly end after he shot and wounded a tiger and stole part of its kill. The tiger then hunted down the poacher in a chillingly premeditated way. — Source

1

CRACKED UNOPENED BEER AT MEMORIAL PUB: TED'S TRIBUTE TO WW2. Ted d'Auvergne was a Waihao Downs farmer who left a bottle of beer at the Waihao Forks Hotel when he set off for War in 1939. Sadly, he never returned and his bottle remains unopened at the pub as a memorial to all those who lost their lives in service. HOTEL FORKS NO NATURAL WAIHAO FORKS HOTEL XXXX Home BEER of The If 1 MUS - Bottle is — Source

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