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Your cognition is gonna need a bigger Allen key

33 Bits of Trivia to Assemble in Your Mind Palace Like a Nice Piece of IKEA Furniture

March 27, 2024

What, you thought we were going to build your entire wisdom collection for you? Well, to quote Morpheus from The Matrix, “I can only show you the door, you’re the one that has to walk through it.” Hear that, you little Neos? Yes, in this analogy there can be more than one Neo. There’ll be a red and blue pill at the bottom of this fact batch, and you’ll have to decide. The blue pill will wipe them from your memory, but the red pill… The red pill will lock them in for life!

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Titleist AN OREGON RESORT EMPLOYS GOAT CADDIES. The newest golf course at Silvies Valley Ranch is steep in places, so you can hire the services of one of their professionally trained goats. The four- legged, notoriously nonjudgmental caddies carry your clubs in a custom- designed bag, along with balls and beverages. CRACKED.COM — Source

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CRACKED.COM MOUNT EVEREST IS COVERED IN POOP. Basic fact: Humans poop. And thousands of humans attempting to climb Mount Everest over several decades means a lot of poop has been dropped on its slopes. It's so bad that some climbers refuse to boil snow for water, and the mountain has been called a fecal time bomb. — Source

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"You owe me forty three thousand Mickeys"

The nation of Niue puts pop culture icons on their money. Niue, an island nation in the Pacific, is so tiny that it doesn't have much of an economy. A sizable portion of its revenue comes from the pop culture coins they mint. While the coins are certainly legal tender, their true value comes from selling them as collector items. — Source

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CRACKED.COM ARE YOU A BAD DRIVER? IT MIGHT BE GENETIC. About 30 percent of Americans have a gene variant that limits the production of a certain brain protein. The University of California found that people with this variant perform worse on a driving test. It was a very small study, but don't let that stop you from using it as an excuse. — Source

29

CRACKED.COM SEX DOLLS WERE USED AS ESPIONAGE TOOLS. The JIB, or jack-in-a-box, was regularly used by CIA operatives in Moscow in the '80s. Like in some raunchy comedy, the device would quickly inflate a regular blow-up doll as the agents left their cars, tricking their relentless KGB tails into thinking they were still in the passenger seat. — Source

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GRAGKED.COM BREAST IMPLANTS OFFER SLIGHT PROTECTION AGAINST BULLETS. Now, no one is suggesting you should rely on your boob job to save your life. You definitely shouldn't. We're just pointing out that researchers at the University of Utah found that saline implants can slow down bullets and reduce their penetration by 20 percent. — Source

26

CRACKED.COM SOLDIERS KEEP LEAKING SENSITIVE INFORMATION VIA THEIR PHONES. Nowadays, you don't need spies to know the location of secret military bases. All you need is soldiers recklessly using their smartphones like normal people. Fitness apps and GPS-tagged photos often result in service members sharing F150 information that isn't supposed to be shared. — Source

25

Kathy Bates' grandfather paraded the (fake) mummy of John Wilkes Booth. According to Finis Bates, the Booth who died in a barn was an impostor. The real Booth ran away, and he, Bates, had his mummified body, which he exhibited at circus sideshows. Henry Ford was close to buying the mummy, until his subordinates exposed the hoax. CRACKED.COM — Source

24

Early elevators were blamed for elevator sickness. When elevators were becoming common in the early 20th century, many users reported nausea and dizziness. This elevator sickness was caused by organs still moving when the elevator stopped - or so some dubiously reasoned. CRACKED.COM — Source

23

CRACKED.COM Joe Son from Austin Powers is in prison for life. Son (who played Random Task) was convicted in 2011 for kidnapping and torturing a woman back in 2000. Then he beat his cellmate to death, adding 27 years to his life sentence. — Source

22

U.S. farmers were encouraged (even required) to grow pot. Hemp used to be big in colonial times. In 1619, the Virginia legislature passed a law requiring every farmer to grow hemp. Everything was fine until the early 20th century, when the plant was demonized because poor, non-white people smoked it. CRACKED.COM — Source

21

CRACKED.COM You can fit every planet in the Solar system between the Earth and the Moon. While everyone knows the Moon revolves around the Earth, most people don't have the right idea of how far it is. Depending on where the Moon is in its orbit, there's enough room to fit every planet in the Solar System end to end in the intervening space. — Source

20

Great Britain tried out ice ships during World War II. Short of metal to build warships, Britain launched Project Habakkuk to build a bergship out of pykrete (a tough mixture of ice and sawdust that takes months to melt). But the idea turned out not to be very practical, and the good ship Popsicle was eventually scrapped. CRACKED.COM — Source

19

The Beatles had their start at a seedy German bar. Before the Beatles were the Beatles, they were a regular feature at the Indra Club, the naughtiest place on earth, a joint in Hamburg's red-light district. It wasn't exactly a good time for them, but the experience they gained helped them become a professional band. Friends HSV CRACKED.COM — Source

18

The inventor of the USB says his team blew it. by not making the plug work both ways. Ajay Bhatt said that would need more wires and circuits, so it would have been more expensive - they thought about it, but it would have cost too much. Still, 20 years after inventing it, he says that was a mistake and the USB plug was good, but not good enough. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

17

When Baby Groot throws up in Guardians of the Galaxy 2, that's James Gunn's nod to his roots. It's his way of acknowledging that he started out in B-movies and isn't afraid to resort to the lowest common denominator which is a baby tree vomiting. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

16

Sharks have been around longer than trees have. Sharks started popping up about 450 million years ago, while trees showed up 100 million years later. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

15

Peter Stormare just kind of stumbled into a role in John Wick: Chapter 2. Не was hanging out with Keanu Reeves and, since he was a fan of the first movie, he asked Reeves What can I do? The rest is movie history. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

14

Black olives are just ripe green olives. Freshly picked olives are inedible, so both green and black olives are cured. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

13

Electric toasters predate sliced bread. The first electric toaster was invented in 1893. Pre-sliced bread wasn't available commercially unti 1928. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

12

Strawberries as we know them don't occur in nature. The hybrid of the Virginia wild strawberry and the Chilean beach strawberry was invented in France in the 18th century. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

11

Coffee doesn't taste as good as it smells because salivia wipes away the flavor. 300 of the 631 chemicals involved in forming the coffee scent are digested or changed by saliva. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

10

Vlasic has a stork mascot because pregnant women supposedly crave pickles. TASTE Vlasic MG CRUNCH SINCE 190 KOSHER DILL JOU much WHOLES The secret to Vlasic's success was to sell their Polish pickles in glass jars. And a killer marketing campaign. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

9

The red puddle under your steak isn't blood. Blood is drained before butchering. The liquid is a mixture of water and the protein myoglobin. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

8

The spikes on the Statue of Liberty's crown don't represent the seven seas. Or the seven continents, for that matter - they're just sun rays, and the circle represents a halo, which indicates she's divine. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

7

Meat sealed in a vacuum pack is naturally purple, they just color it red to make it look better. That's done because purple meat looks pretty weird to consumers, of course - so carbon monoxide, rosemary extract and/or nitrite are added. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

6

The fearsome Blackbeard was only active for a grand total of two years. He's first mentioned as a pirate in 1716 (he was a privateer from 1701 to 1713), and they caught and killed him in 1718 8 - - and that was that. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

5

Medieval knights' training regimen could be incredibly physically demanding. One French knight had a regimen that involved things like jumping onto a horse and climbing a ladder on the underside, all in full armor. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

4

At least on some trails in Texas, about 25% of all cowboys you'd see were Black. Turns out, Black cowboys were a lot more plentiful in the Old West than Western shows and movies would lead you to conclude. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

3

Egyptian medicine was. surprisingly specialized, and they even had proctologists. The Egyptian term for those literally translates to shepherd of the anus. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

2

The Salem witch trials might have been caused by hallucinogenic fungus. Ergot can get into bread and can make you see weird things while suffering spasms - basically, you look bewitched. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

1

A Chinese businessman hired a hitman, who hired a hitman, who hired another, who hired another. The fifth hitman simply asked the man to fake his death. Ponzi scheme done. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

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