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34 Supreme Bits of Trivia That Come With Sour Cream and Diced Tomatoes

June 17, 2024

Facts are the nibbles of the knowledge nachos. The spoonfuls of the smartness sauce. The licks of the learning lollipop.

Great! Now we’re hungry. And all because you needed us to use alliteration to explain that facts pile up into what will one day be a lifetime of wisdom. We’ll get some tacos while you take these in. Unless you need us to read them for you too. You would, wouldn’t you?

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34

Richard Donner was never told what the budget for Superman was. It's a miracle Donner managed to make such a beloved movie, as the producers for some reason wouldn't let him know how much money he had to work with. They'd just tell him, You can't do that, without further guidance. Не didn't even get to see the final cut until the premiere. CRACKED.COM — Source

33

CRACKED.COM Women's restrooms weren't always bathrooms. In Victorian England, women were thought of as delicate creatures that would crumble at the drop of a hat-so public rooms were set up, with chairs and couches, for the ladies to seek shelter from the scary outside. Once toilets became a thing, those were just added OMEN to existing restrooms. — Source

32

The Oversteegen sisters were teenage Nazi hunters. Freddie and Truus Oversteegen were only 14 and 17, but did their part in helping the Dutch resistance take care of Nazi occupiers. They would seduce Nazis in bars and then lead into the woods- where a resistance fighter would shoot the Nazi creeping on underage girls. CRACKED.COM — Source

31

CRACKED.COM Pineapples used to be a status symbol. For centuries, pineapples in Europe were rare, exotic, and above all expensive, as they were imported from across the ocean. The rich would often get one-not to eat it, but to show off their wealth by parading the fruit in front of other people. — Source

30

A death row prisoner tried to get too fat for the electric chair. In 1952, Donald Snyder was sentenced to death for killing a 9-year- old girl. Resolved to grow too big to be executed, he put on 150 pounds in less than one year. It didn't work- when the time came, he fit the chair just fine. CRACKED.COM — Source

29

There's a market for royal underwear. People exist willing to pay top dollar for underwear worn by famous people - not just celebrities, but also queens. Pairs of Queen Victoria's bloomers have sold for over $15,000, and a pair of Elizabeth Il's (dirty) undies fetched $18,000 on eBay. CRACKED.COM — Source

28

When it comes to chess, our robot overlords have been beating us for 15 years. That's how long it's been since the last time a human beat an AI in a chess tournament. CRACKED.COM — Source

27

In Sweden's capital, they had a speed camera lottery system. Anybody who drove under the speed limit (or right at the limit) would be entered into a lottery, and the prizes would come from the fines paid by people who drove over the limit. And it worked pretty well. CRACKED.COM — Source

26

Emilia Clarke

Emilia Clarke, AKA Daenerys, had two brain aneurysms. And she founded an aneurysm charity - it's called SameYou, and it focuses on research to help uncover the cause of aneurysms and on support for people recovering from aneurysms. CRACKED.COM — Source

25

In Albania, there's a kind of superstition that links hiccuping and gossiping. The idea is that you start hiccuping if somebody spoke your name, and the way to stop hiccuping is to say the name of the person you suspect happened to say your name. CRACKED.COM — Source

24

In 1875, a swarm of locusts very literally blotted out the sun. They were Rocky Mountain locusts, and the swarm was 110 miles wide and 1,800 miles long. CRACKED.COM — Source

23

Apples don't actually come from Europe, or from North America. They're actually from Kazakhstan, and they spread to many other places pretty early on - apple seeds were spread wide through Europe by 1500 ВСЕ. CRACKED.COM — Source

22

In China, most doctors wouldn't tell you you had cancer if your family asked them not to. According to one survey, 98% of physicians would tell the family first, and 82% wouldn't tell the patient if their family didn't want the patient to know. CRACKED.COM — Source

21

Chances are, your supermarket beefburger might have some mystery meat inside. In 2013, Ireland's Food Safety Authority tasted a bunch of supermarket beefburgers, and it turned out that 85% of them contained pig DNA and one third contained horse DNA. CRACKED.COM — Source

20

The US now officially has more Spanish speakers than Spain itself does. That was the case in 2015, and presumably there are even more Spanish speakers now - back then, the US had 41 million native Spanish speakers and 11 bilingual ones. CRACKED.COM — Source

19

One Olympic medalist, Rebecca Twigg, is living on the street after her wins. But, in an interview about it, she framed the issue this way: The point is not so much that I need help, it's that there are a bunch of people who need help - 12,000 in this area, half a million in the country, CRACKED.COM — Source

18

Way, way more people in Beverly Hills than you might think are Iranian. Brigate Apparently, 22% of the Beverly Hills population is actually of Iranian descent. CRACKED.COM — Source

17

If you bought property in Japan, chances are you might want to resell quickly. 3F ADI the ARADISE ON CE IKARADA 23 ts كم 4 2 # Рахиашш IG APPL (до) P PACHIN LA e mas Houses there depreciate in value very fast - after 25 years, a house's value goes down almost to О. CRACKED.COM — Source

16

Bruce Willis turned down a role in Ghost, and Patrick Swayze got it. At the time, he said, I just didn't get it. I said, 'Hey, the guy's dead. How are you gonna have a romance? Famous last words. And this is the man who later went on to star in The Sixth Sense. CRACKED.COM — Source

15

A lawyer dressed up as Tigger in court to prove a point. In 2004, a Walt Disney World guest accused a performer of groping her and her daughter. The guy's attorney said that the Tigger costume was too unwieldy for that, and put it on himself to prove it. The courtroom shenanigans worked, and the performer was acquitted. CRACKED.COM — Source

14

CRACKED.COM The early 20th century was more accepting of trans people than you think. While life for transgender people was never exactly easy, there were places 100 years ago where you could be out as trans. Berlin was a particularly accepting city in the 1920s. A lot of research in the field was done there, before the Nazis came marching in and burned it all. — Source

13

Fake butt-eyes protect COWS from predators. In Botswana, lions often kill cattle, which leads to farmers killing the lions. To protect both cats and cows, conservationists had the idea of painting eyes on the cattle's rumps, taking inspiration from the eye-like designs on butterflies and other animals that keep predators at bay. CRACKED.COM — Source

12

Open floor plans were supposed to make women's lives better. The woman, old-timey architects reasoned, couldn't be stuck in the kitchen if the kitchen was also the living and dining room. (The idea that it'd be тот in the kitchen wasn't questioned). Instead, it made the rest of the family inescapable, forcing women to multitask even harder. CRACKED.COM — Source

11

CRACKED.COM Napoleon used fake news to defeat an enemy. Napoleon was racing back home to reinforce his crumbling empire, a French newspaper said. This pleased Austrian tactician Karl Mack von Leiberich, who rode to rout whatever was left of Napoleon's forces. Except that the newspaper was a fake, planted by Napoleon's moles - Mack walked straight into a trap, and had to surrender his entire army. — Source

10

Climate Change

CRACKED.COM The genocide of Native Americans might have changed the climate. The Little Ice Age was a particularly cold period after the Middle Ages, and researchers think that massacring the Americas' native population was a big factor. Huge swathes of abandoned farmland were taken over by wild plant life, which absorbed CO2 and lowered the temperature. — Source

9

CRACKED.COM A lot of honey is fake. Studies show that about 76% of store- bought honey contains nothing of the pollen that should be found in the yummy bee puke. Honey is the third most counterfeited food in the world, with a lot of it replaced by syrup fillers. China is a primary source of this fake honey. — Source

8

101222106 CRACKED.COM 0.1.00.00 OL 11001 0011101 11101012 10000 L 010 11010 I 101 11 1 10 goo 10 110 00111 01 Artificial intelligence might have already killed people. According to U.N. reports, lethal 1 autonomous weapons systems (drones 0 that can identify and attack targets without human intervention) destroyed a convoy in Libya in 2020. It's not clear, however, if anyone was killed in the attack. — Source

7

M Mario's first credit was as a villain. The character was called Jumpman when he first appeared in Donkey Kong, and didn't get the name Mario until the sequel, Donkey Kong Jr. - where he was the baddie. CRACKED.COM — Source

6

CRACKED.COM George McFly was going to be a boxer. George becoming a science fiction writer was thematically appropriate, but that wasn't the original plan. Initially, the left hook he gives Biff was going to set him on the path to becoming a boxer. — Source

5

CRACKED.COM Stevie Nicks' Stand Back was inspired by Prince. When Prince's Little Red Corvette came on her car's radio, Nicks stopped her honeymoon to write the similarly synth-driven Stand Back. Then she contacted Prince to split the royalties, and was amazed when he showed up at the studio and did the synth part himself. — Source

4

CRACKED.COM Your hamster comes from an incestuous couple. The Syrian hamster is by far the most common domesticated hamster - and every single one you can find in pet stores is descended from two siblings, the only survivors of a litter caught in the wild in 1930. — Source

3

Where's Waldo was censored over a microscopic nipple. Never mind Waldo himself - would you be able to find a nipple in a Where's Waldo beach scene? Yeah, we know you would - and so were several American mothers in the early 90s, who managed to get the books removed from library shelves over the tiny ink dot. CRACKED.COM — Source

2

Peter Falk wasn't the first to play Columbo. Bert Freed played the lieutenant (sans raincoat) in an episode of the 1960 series The Chevy Mystery Show. But it was just a one-off thing, and the character still didn't have any of the shabby charm Falk brought to the part years later. CRACKED.COM — Source

1

CRACKED.COM Guillermo del Toro was very disappointed with a UFO. Del Toro claims he and a friend saw a UFO once - which he describes not as majestic or breathtaking, but as crappy. It was a flying saucer, he said, so clichéd, with lights . It's so sad. You heard the man, aliens - you need to up your design game! — Source

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