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34 Highly Concentrated Bits of Trivia Meant to Be Consumed With a 2-to-1 Ratio of Water

Facts that expand in your brain like those magic dinosaur sponge things

34 Highly Concentrated Bits of Trivia Meant to Be Consumed With a 2-to-1 Ratio of Water

July 02, 2024

No, swallowing watermelon seeds doesn’t make full watermelons grow in your belly. But we can assure you that swallowing watermelon facts will make full-blown watermelon knowledge grow in your brain!

And to be clear, we don’t mean to print these facts, ball them up and swallow them. We mean reading them. “Swallowing facts” is another term for reading.

What, you didn’t know that? You need more facts than we thought.

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34

A former UN Secretary General and Austrian President was also a Nazi. Kurt Waldheim was head of the UN from 1972 to 1981 -- years later, to international outrage, his Nazi past in WWII came to light. CRACKED.COM — Source

33

Pretty much everybody in the Netherlands can walk to a nearby supermarket. 80% of Dutch people live within one kilometer of a supermarket - the region with the longest average distance is Drenthe and Friesland, with 1.2. CRACKED.COM — Source

32

There's a fake Dracula gravestone placed in the graveyard of the British village of Whitby. Part of the novel takes place there, and tourists regularly visit it and ask for Dracula's grave - so someone had a fake gravestone put up. CRACKED.COM — Source

31

30

Military tanks get their name from a lie told by the British military long ago. Tanks were developed in secret, and workers who made them were told they were mechanized water tanks for soldiers in deserts. The name stuck. CRACKED.COM — Source

29

Some of the biggest sperm cells in the animal kingdom are from fruit flies. And the biggest sperm among fruit flies is from drosophilia bifurca - they have sperm that's over two inches long (that's 1,000 times longer than ours). CRACKED.COM — Source

28

We almost got a sprawling Game of Thrones RPG, but Skyrim killed it. Bethesda Softworks was offered a chance to make the RPG, and they were huge fans, but they had to choose between making that or making Skyrim. CRACKED.COM — Source

27

The T-800's sunglasses are a deliberate symbol in Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Не loses them as he starts to become more human, rather than a blank-faced killing machine, and that process starts in the hospital scene. CRACKED.COM — Source

26

In Kung Fu Panda 2, Mr Ping is kind of based on the actor who's playing him. His dad owned a noodle shop, and he worked in it from a very early age - so the filmmakers integrated into Mr. Ping and made him a noodle shop owner. CRACKED.COM — Source

25

The Hello, Dolly holding hands moment in WALL-E wasn't in the original. Holding hands is a crucial symbol in WALL-E, but there was no hand holding in Hello, Dolly except in one wide shot, so they just faked a close-up. CRACKED.COM — Source

24

The house with a blue door in Notting Hill was owned by the writer, Richard Curtis. SANICK Property prices there went up after the movie came out, and Curtis sold the house not long after, so he'd joke he made the movie just to do that. CRACKED.COM — Source

23

The Twilight Zone

The Twilight Zone was created because of racist backlash in the '50s. The TWILIGHT ZONE Rod Serling's script about the murder of Emmett Till, a Black boy, was rejected by studio bigwigs who feared blowback .. so Serling started writing sci-fi. CRACKED.COM — Source

22

Orson Welles' last unfinished film was completed 42 years after filming. esca Fresc The Other Side of the Wind was one of Welles' most personal works (and it became available on Netflix only in 2018, 43 years after his death). CRACKED.COM — Source

21

zz Top grew beards because they'd gone on hiatus and let themselves go. They took a 2-year break once their tour after the album Tejas didn't really work out, and when they reunited, Billy and Dusty both had huge beards. CRACKED.COM — Source

20

The country of Laos built a massive monument with money for a U.S. airport. The U.S. gave Laos funding for an airport that'd be used by U.S. jets, but no contract was signed, so Laos built a huge triumphal arch, Patuxai, instead. CRACKED.COM — Source

19

Trees that can withstand high winds follow a rule described by Leonardo Da Vinci. The rule is a mathematical relationship between the branches and the trunk, and a mathematician verified in 2011 that it helps make trees wind-resistant. CRACKED.COM — Source

18

Some molecules can be left-handed or right-handed (and it's called chirality). COOH COOH H с R R с H A left-handed molecule is basically a mirror image of a right-handed one, and a molecule's handedness can determine many of its chemical properties. CRACKED.COM — Source

17

JFK might have lived if he wasn't wearing a back brace when he got shot. The brace, which he wore due to serious spine issues, kept him from bending down. Without it, he might have ducked when he got hit by the first (non-fatal) shot. CRACKED.COM — Source

16

The city of Chicago reversed the course of the Chicago River in the 19th century. TRUMP To help control the spread of waterborne illnesses like typhoid and cholera, the river was diverted from Lake Michigan (the city's water source). CRACKED.COM — Source

15

The original Spanish name for Key West was pretty grisly -- Bone Island. When European sailors first showed up, they noticed lots of human bones in plain sight (it was a ceremonial act). That name, Cayo de Guesas, became Key West. CRACKED.COM — Source

14

Snails fight against parasitic worms by encasing them in their shell. Once the worms get into the shell, the shell's tissue slowly starts sticking to the worms. The parasites can get fused into the shell in a week. CRACKED.COM — Source

13

Haley Joel Osment could not blink on-screen, at all, in Spielberg's A.I. My dad and I mastered it to make me noticeably different and it worked. But that made the role his hardest one yet, he said at the time. CRACKED.COM — Source

12

The little boats used in Dunkirk are the little ships used in the real evacuation. MIMOSA The owners themselves were at the helm, but their lack of filming experience made things hard. It was like herding cats, the marine coordinator said. CRACKED.COM — Source

11

James Cameron

James Cameron sold the Terminator script for $1 just so he could direct it. Не didn't want to sell the script without directing it himself, but no production company wanted an inexperienced director -- so he sold for $1, to Gale Anne Hurd. CRACKED.COM — Source

10

Clint Eastwood

Clint Eastwood hated his iconic cigarillos in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Director Sergio Leone wanted a ton of takes, which sometimes made Clint so sick he'd say, You'd better get it this time, because I'm going to throw up. CRACKED.COM — Source

9

The 7-minute shot in It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia's episode Charlie Work was done by a guy walking and holding a camera. They didn't put the camera on a dolly or a pre-programmed rig -- it was just camera operator Adam Sklena walking backwards, and he did it in on the first take. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

8

In 1994, one woman got the IRS to agree that her massive breast implants are tax-exempt. She was an exotic dancer, so they were considered a business expense. The legal opinion said: Because petitioner's implants were so extraordinarily large, we find that they were useful only in her business. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

7

Fuel tanks from U.S. Air Force jets are being used as rice canoes in Vietnam today. The locals just take a fuel tank and cut out a section of the top, which leaves them with an aluminum canoe. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

6

Sharks

There's a white shark cafe in the Pacific where all the sharks go. It's a Colorado-sized patch of ocean about 1,200 nautical miles east of Hawaii, and great white sharks from the west coasts of Mexico and the U.S. swim there en masse every year. Once there, they dive deep below the surface and then come back, over and over, for days -- but it's not clear why. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

5

U.S. government advice for running from bears says you shouldn't sacrifice your friends. A set of recommendations from the National Park Service cautions against pushing down a friend who's slower than you (even if you think the friendship has run its course). NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

4

In Japan, a smorgasbord is called a Viking. A Japanese hotel manager introduced the smorgasbord to an elite Tokyo hotel in the late '50s, but the name was a tongue-twister, so he wanted to call it something else --he picked Viking after the 1958 Kirk Douglas movie The Vikings, a smash hit in Japan that had a big feast scene. The name stuck. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

3

Thousands of people of Jewish descent served in the Wehrmacht during WWII. That includes 2 field marshals and 10 generals. Hitler personally signed declarations stating that 77 high-ranking officers of mixed Jewish race or married to a Jew, according to German military documents, were actually of German blood. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

2

When he was 15, The Rock saved his mom from committing suicide. She left her car on Interstate 65 and just started walking into traffic. The Rock followed her and pulled her back - - and today, he says, she doesn't remember any of that (Probably best she doesn't, he says). NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

1

Female trout fake orgasms. During trout sex, the male and female both quiver, and release the egg and sperm at the same time. But sometimes, the female doesn't release her eggs, so she can keep them for another mate (plus, having more fake orgasms apparently attracts more male trout). NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

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