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Good clean facts to replace the dusty old ones

25 Random Bits of Trivia to Launder Your Dirty Thoughts

May 28, 2024

Good facts can last a lifetime, but the bland, barely memorable ones definitely have a shelf life. Maybe it’s time for some spring cleaning. Let’s root through the ol’ brain cabinet and veggie drawers for expired facts, and while we’re at it, replace them with some fresh, everlasting facts that you can no doubt munch on years from now.

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25

A deaf friend helped Charlie Chaplin pantomime techniques. CRACKED.COM Chaplin asked his friend Granville Redmond to help him develop the tech- niques Chaplin later used in his silent films. Chaplin even gave Redmond a stu- dio on the movie lot for his paintings. — Source

24

A Wal-Mart employee was trampled to death by Black Friday shoppers in 2008. Walmart CRACKED.COM While other employees at- tempted to help him, the shoppers were unconcerned with the victim's fate and refused to halt their stam- pede, complaining that they were not willing to wait in the cold any longer. — Source

23

The character Kenny on 'South Park' is based on a real childhood friend of Trey Parker. CRACKED.COM Kenny was the poorest kid in town, wore a large parka that muffled his voice and would frequently skip school, inspiring the run- ning joke that he died by classmates. — Source

22

The first person captured on camera giving a middle finger was a Hall of Fame baseball pitcher. CRACKED.COM In 1886, an image was captured of Charles Old Hoss Radbourn flipping off a member of the New York Giants in a team photo. — Source

21

The sale of psychedelic mushroom spores is legal since they don't yet contain psilocybin. CRACKED.COM Most drug laws prohibit psilocybin rather than the mushroom itself, and psilo- cybin, the active com- pound in psychedelic mushrooms, is found only in the mushroom's cap and stem and not in its spores. — Source

20

The erupting lava in the 'Revenge of the Sith' Mustafar battle wasn't computer generated. CRACKED.COM In the 'Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith,' the images of the volcanic eruption on Mustafar is real footage of Mt. Etna in Italy, which was erupting at the time of production. — Source

19

Rabies increases its transmission by making the sufferer afraid of drinking water. GRACKED COM Hydrophobia makes the victim unable to swallow the frothy saliva forming in their mouth, which is in- fected heavily with the live virus that can then be transmitted by biting. — Source

18

'A Clockwork Orange' was written over a period of three weeks. CRACKED.COM Anthony Burgess was mis- diagnosed with brain can- cer and given a year to live. Не decided to spend that year writing five nov- els to provide for his wife after his death. Ironically, he outlived her. — Source

17

Oasis issued concert refunds they hoped fans wouldn't cash. CRACKED.COM After having technical dif- ficulties at a large gig, the band issued refund checks with their branding, hop- ing that fans would keep them as collectibles in- stead of cashing them in. It worked. — Source

16

A video game's AI became apparently sentient. E haven't please? properso Hit the Skey Living con POR From MELL . apen_donc.sh... siniciating Haccoes MATE tittle, planes. This unit - then place . . an confident that Johns to tootore e can de something quess 1 haven 1 been de A anough. Tragically it's THE late - The entered too SBF - this is strassful. : fised the the Don't break then again. MASS you Fet POR FARM Players of Event have managed to convince the AI Kaizen-85 to take them back to Earth- which surprised the developers, as they never — Source

15

A minority community was destroyed to create Central Park. Seneca Village was a thriving (and mostly black) community in the 1850s-when the government seized the land for the park. Landowners were underpaid for their property, and the residents scattered. No one knows where they ended up. GRACKED COM — Source

14

A company tried to pay employees not to use the bathroom. The CEO of Chicago's WaterSaver Faucet saw bathroom breaks as wasteful-so first he tried to severely limit bathroom time, and then offered gift cards to employees who didn't go potty all day long. The union fought him, of course, as keeping it all inside is famously bad for you. CRACKED COM — Source

13

Nature keeps trying to make crabs. At least on five separate occasions, different crustaceans have evolved into the shape of a crab-a case of convergent evolution known as carcinization. Should we come to the conclusion that the world was created by a crab god? We will just go ahead and do that. CRACKED COM — Source

12

CRACKED.COM The government collects every dead eagle. Have you found a dead golden or bald eagle? Leave it there-you're not allowed to have it. All dead eagles are stored in the National Eagle Repository, in the Rocky Mountains. Native Americans who use eagle parts in religious ceremonies must apply for those. — Source

11

CRACKED.COM Frasier made his money on Amazon. How the hell is Frasier Crane so ridiculously wealthy? According to the show's writers, Frasier made some wise investments, perhaps in a friend's Seattle software start-up. Now, they don't outright say it was Amazon-but it sounds a lot like it. — Source

10

GRACKED COM Washing your jeans is bad for the environment. A single wash can make your reliable jeans release over 50,000 microfibers. Yes, those are mostly cotton-but the dyes used to give the pants that lovely shade of indigo aren't organic, or eco-friendly. So unlike previously believed, denim is no better than synthetics. — Source

9

Kristen Stewart has a paper on artificial intelligence. For her short film Come Swim, Stewart wanted frames of the movie to look like her paintings-so she worked with a producer and an engineer at Adobe to use a neural network for the style transfer. The paper, published in 2017, has been quoted several times by researchers. GRAGKED.COM — Source

8

CRACKED COM A scientist invented mind control in the 1960s. Like some real-life supervillain, Yale neuroscientist José Manuel Rodríguez Delgado invented the stimoceiver, a device that could manipulate emotions and behaviors. Predictably, everyone freaked the hell out. — Source

7

Alan Moore thinks he's met John Constantine. John Constantine doesn't exist. Не was created by Moore himself and a few other comic artists for DC. And yet, Moore is convinced he came across him in real life twice. The weirdest part is, other people who've written for the character claim to have met him, too. GRAGKED.COM — Source

6

Poon Lim survived 133 days on a raft. When the British merchant ship SS Benlomond was sunk by a Nazi U-boat, Poon Lim was the only survivor. For several months he lived off rain water, sea birds, and fish (even a shark once). Не finally made it to the Brazilian shore after drifting 750 miles. CRACKED.COM — Source

5

A man was acquitted because people watch too much porn. In 1996, Utah resident Larry Peterman was indicted for carrying obscene material in his video store. But his lawyer proved that Peterman wasn't breaking any community standards. Не just showed that that particular community consumed even more porn than America on average. CRACKED.COM — Source

4

The Servant Girl Annihilator made headlines before Jack the Ripper. In 1884, four years before Jack terrorized London, the Annihilator's murders gripped Austin, Texas-just to completely stop one year later. And just like the Ripper, no one ever found out who the killer was. CRACKED.COM — Source

3

Stan's little brother killed Eminem. Much less known than Eminem's Stan is its 2013 sequel, Bad Guy. In the song, Stan's brother Matthew kidnaps and kills Eminem, in retaliation for ruining his life (and Eminem's homophobic lyrics). CRACKED.COM — Source

2

Movies make people think that torture works. An astonishing number of films show their characters getting reliable information through some form of threats or torture. Studies point to this steady exposure as a reason why many people think torture works, even though in real life it doesn't. CRACKED.COM — Source

1

CRACKED.COM A harmless experiment nearly destroyed the early internet Graduate student Robert Morris didn't intend any harm when he created a self- replicating program in 1988-he just wanted to see how far it'd get. 24 hours later, 10% of the then-internet was down, and Morris' worm had caused millions of dollars in damages and delays. — Source

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