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32 Cold, Hard Trivia Tidbits That Are Like a Life Raft in a Sea of Content

You won’t know how much you needed these facts until they’re up in your brain

32 Cold, Hard Trivia Tidbits That Are Like a Life Raft in a Sea of Content

March 26, 2024

If you’ve ever been stranded at sea, you know the huge sigh of relief that comes with finding a deserted island. Well, that’s what happened with this list, too. We were scrolling in a sea of nothingness, stumbled upon these facts, visually devoured each one and then experienced such a sigh of relief as we floated back out into the internet. They must’ve been exactly what we needed.

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32

It's never been illegal to kill a praying mantis in the US. GRACKED.COM Praying Mantis' have never been an endan- gered species, and the urban legend that it's against the law to kill one has been around since the 1950's. — Source

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30

Knitting is part of the school curriculum in Finland. CRACKED.COM Crafts as well as knitting have long been an integral part of Finnish culture, hence why it is a part of the school curriculum and part of the tradition that has long been passed from one generation to the next. — Source

29

Pill bugs are crustaceans, not insects. GRACKED CORE The potato bug, ro- ly-poly, or woodlouse is an isopod, a type of non-insect arthropod also called a terrestri- al crustacean. — Source

28

Lead can be detected in the remains of former Japanese geishas. CRACKED.COM The white face paint worn by geishas and samurai in ancient Ja- pan was lead based, and so lead can be de- tected in their bones. — Source

27

Toilet paper is bleached to make it softer and last longer. GRAGKED.COM Manufacturers bleach wood pulp to remove the polymer lignin, a process that creates softer tissue. The paper being whitened is just a positive by-prod- uct of this process. — Source

26

Parrots will eat clay to help when food is scarce. CRACKED.COM This is most common during the breeding season when parrots need extra minerals to feed their young. Clay helps eliminate toxins from the body, allowing parrots to eat toxic foods without be- coming ill. — Source

25

The Ute Native Americans of Utah wore trilobite fossils as amulets to protect from bullets. CRACKED.COM The fossils, called lit- tle water bugs by the Utes, were worn on a string and said to pro- tect against bullets and diseases such as diphtheria. — Source

24

CRACKED.COM MINECRAFT PLAYERS ARE HELPING PRESERVE A DYING LANGUAGE. Elfdalian is a rare language with about 3,000 speakers in Sweden. To help keep it alive, a group of Swedish and American enthusiasts are recreating the town where it is spoken in Minecraft, complete with quests to immerse players in the language. — Source

23

CRACKED.COM THE FIRST RUN OF X-MEN WAS A FLOP. X-Men changed the superhero game, but only after it came back from crashing and burning. Sales kept declining from the title's beginning, until it was cancelled in 1970. Five years later, it was relaunched with a more diverse roster of characters, and it GK DEC eventually took off. — Source

22

ROMANIA HAS AN UNDERGROUND AMUSEMENT PARK. Salina Turda is a centuries-old salt mine that was also used to store cheese and as a bomb shelter. Today you can find such things as boat rides, a mini golf course, a bowling alley, and a Ferris wheel. It's good to know mini golf will survive a nuclear apocalypse. CRACKED.COM — Source

21

CRACKED.COM CARLOS KAISER FAKED A WHOLE SPORTS CAREER. For over 20 years, Brazilian Carlos Kaiser Raposo was hailed as a soccer star-without ever playing. Не managed this by being charismatic while constantly faking injuries and feeding stories about his feats to the media. His real talent was hoodwinking everyone-even a dangerous gangster who hired him to play for his team. — Source

20

CRACKED.COM THE CITY OF FLORENCE BANNED ARABIC NUMERALS. The Indo-Arabic numeric system we use today was resisted for centuries in Europe. Professional abacus users lobbied intensely against this newfangled Eastern invention, fearing their profession would become obsolete. Florence and other cities outright banned Arabic numerals, citing concerns that they would be used for fraud. B p6 RAS Ф & OGVL BOETIVS 21 8 РУ VC 6 — Source

19

CRACKED.COM SOLITARY CONFINEMENT WAS INTENDED TO BE HUMANE. Quakers conceived solitary confinement as a humanitarian alternative to brutal 18th-century prison conditions. In theory, inmates kept in isolation would read the Bible, pray, and do penance. But when it was tried for real, the idea turned out to seriously screw up the prisoners' brains. — Source

18

BANK OF AMERICA TRICKED A CUSTOMER INTO COMMITING A CRIME. San Francisco resident Matthew Shinnick asked a teller about a suspicious check he had been given. The teller told him everything was fine and he could cash it. Then they had him arrested for trying to cash a phony check. The bank denied any wrongdoing afterwards. CRACKED.COM — Source

17

Most Canadians live south of the 49th parallel. 40 N Ceded to CANADA Britain, 1818 Ceded to Oregon United States, 1818 Territory 49th Parallel Stony Mts 42° N Louisiana Purchase 1803 Atlantic UNITED STATES Ocean 500 MILES 72% of them live south of it, including the population of the two largest Canadian cities, Montreal and Toronto. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

16

Most of the sets for Independence Day were built in the same hangar where Howard Hughes built the Spruce Goose. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

15

In 1969, Pat Sajak cut off Nixon to play Christmas music. Nixon made a very long pause in a Christmas speech to the troops in Vietnam, so Sajak cut off the broadcast and put on some music. When Nixon resumed talking, Sajak just left the music on, thinking soldiers would rather listen to that than the President. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

14

In Nepal, there are honey hunters who climb granite cliffs to get hallucinogenic mad honey. It's produced by Himalayan giant honeybees, who make nests at high altitudes under the overhangs of vertical cliffs, and sells for $60 to $80 a pound on the black market. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

13

Streaming Despacito used up more power than some countries produce in a year. It was streamed 4.6 billion times from January 2017 to early 2020, which consumed as much electricity as Sierra Leone, Chad, Somalia, the Central African Republic, and Guinea-Bissau make in a year, combined. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

12

A real buffalo was killed in Apocalypse Now. To get permission from locals to film on their land, the movie crew gave them animals to slaughter for food, including two water buffalo. Francis Ford Coppola decided to film one buffalo's slaughter for the movie. I did not direct it or anything, that was the way they do it, he said in 2019. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

11

Little Richard became a preacher after seeing a sign in the sky. C On a 1957 Australian tour, he saw a fireball in the sky (which was the satellite Sputnik 1) and interpreted as God telling him he should change his ways. Не became a preacher a year later, and went back to making regular music after four years of preaching. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

10

Women's brains are four years younger compared to men who are of the same age. According to researchers this is due to an unexplained slower brain metabolism rate, and could also be the reason why women can stay mentally sharp as they age. CRACKED COM — Source

9

CRACKED.COM There is a link between low cholesterol and violent behavior. Studies have found that people who have low cholesterol levels were more likely to commit violent crimes than people of similar demographics who had normal levels. — Source

8

Doctors don't replace your kidney, during a kidney transplant. They add a third one, and transplant in a new ureter to hook it up. CRACKED.COM — Source

7

One in four orthopedic surgeons who have 25 years of experience has performed surgery on the wrong limb at least once. GRACKED COM — Source

6

CRACKED CON Your body houses trillions of microorganisms, percent of which are unknown to science. — Source

5

2000 people a year are treated for BRIs or bagelrelated-injuries. CRACKED.COM People going to the emergency room from hurting themselves while cutting a bagel is so common it has its own name. — Source

4

CRACKED.COM Soldiers in an elite German unit are growing left breasts. au In their drill, they're hitting that side of their chests with rifles over and over, and that seems to be making breast tissue grow. Scientists just aren't sure how. — Source

3

Humans have a second brain, and it's located CRACKED.COM in our guts. A neural network comprised of 100 million neurons in our digestive tract is responsible for our mood. Suddenly, gut feeling makes more sense. — Source

2

OXFORD UNIVERSITY IS OLDER THAN THE AZTEC EMPIRE. The Aztec Empire originated in 1325. The first class at Oxford was in 1095. CRACKED.COM — Source

1

Some of the P water you drink is older 3 than the Sun. A 4 2+8 CRACKED COM That's even though the Sun is older than the Earth. Some water predates the whole solar system, molecules unchanged mg for billions of years. 04 — Source

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