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Give these little facts a good home, would ya?

32 Adorable Bits of Trivia That Fell Out of Their Nest, and You’re Their Mother Now

July 01, 2024

Well, look at the big, spacious, hospitable brain on you! Damn, that thing is nice. You know what would look great in here? A big batch of facts.

Don’t worry, we won’t just dump them in here and walk away. We’re no interior decorators or anything, but we know which facts will look great in each brain fold. Call us the Chip and Joanna Gaines of brain renovations.

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32

Safety glass was born from an accident. One day in 1903, French polymath Édouard Bénédictus accidentally knocked over a glass flask in his lab - but the flask didn't break into pieces. Bénédictus remembered that there was plastic cellulose nitrate earlier in the flask, which had created this bonding effect after drying. CRACKED.COM — Source

31

Adam West

Adam West tried for years to keep on playing Batman. West didn't quietly hang the batboots when his show ended in the '60s. Until the late '80s, he kept pitching increasingly deranged projects where he got to play the Caped Crusader. Не was bitterly disappointed when Michael Keaton was cast instead of him for the 1989 movie. CRACKED.COM — Source

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EXPOSING KENNEDY IS A NOW YOU GREAT FEATHER IN MY CAP! DON'T! BUT OF EVEN GREATER IM- PORTANCE IS CAPTURING NOW YOU and YOU HAVE ME.. Early Superman often went against the police. Supes was always against crime, but that don't make him no bootlicker. Superman's respect for the law was rather loose in his early days, often calling authorities out on their abuses. A recurring character was Sergeant Casey, who repeatedly tried to catch him. CRACKED.COM — Source

28

Astronauts keep losing their fingernails. The fingertips of the astronauts' pressurized gloves are hard as thimbles, and the contact can cause pain and a condition called fingernail delamination - essentially, your nails detach from their nail beds. CRACKED.COM — Source

27

CRACKED.COM The studio forced movie theaters to screen Star Wars. Fox had no faith at all in that silly movie about space puppets, so they told theaters that they had to screen it if they wanted The Other Side of Midnight, which was expected to be a big success. Star Wars immediately went on to outgross the other movie by a bajillion dollars. — Source

26

Mark Zuckerberg criticized his portrayal in The Social Network, except for the wardrobe. Не complained that the filmmakers couldn't get that someone likes building things for the sake of it, not to get girls or get into clubs, but he praised their clothing choices. Like every single shirt and fleece they had in that movie is actually a shirt or fleece that I own, he said. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

25

Ernie Hudson auditioned to play Winston Zeddemore in the Ghostbusters cartoon, but didn't get cast. When he started reading, the director told him it was all wrong because Ernie Hudson didn't do it that way in the movie -- so Hudson said Well, wait a minute: I am Ernie Hudson! Then they told him he got it, but they later cast Arsenio Hall instead. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

24

Elf

Elf was supposed to feature Macy's, but Macy's wasn't into it. They thought seeing a fake Santa in Macy's would ruin the experience for kids, so they said no. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

23

The fetish club where Trinity meets Neo in The Matrix is exactly what it looks like. It's a real S&M club in Sydney, and the people in the scene are the regulars wearing their usual outfits. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

22

Martin Scorsese hates it when actors emphasize something by moving their eyebrows. RI Не does not allow eyebrow movement, says his longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

21

The solution to a 19th-century mystery was found in Sir David Attenborough's back garden. In 1879, Julia Martha Thomas was murdered by her maid, Kate Webster, but her head was never found - this was called the the Barnes mystery. They found a skull in Sir David's back garden in 2011 during building work, and it turned out to have belonged to Thomas. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

20

A beauty YouTuber helped us learn more about how Roman women did their hair. She couldn't recreate a Roman hairstyle using hairpins, so she researched ancient texts and discovered that Romans actually used sewing needles and thread to keep their hair in place. Her findings were accepted as an article in The Journal of Roman Archaeology. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

19

We only have Spider-Man because Stan Lee wouldn't take no for an answer. His publisher didn't like the character (he thought people hated spiders, and Peter Parker was too young and troubled to be a superhero), so Lee snuck Spider-Man into the last issue of Amazing Fantasy comics. It sold so well, the publisher said they should do a series about Spider-Man. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

18

Intuit Conflict Resolution

The Inuit resolve disputes through singing contests. Each of the two people involved in the dispute composes a song ridiculing the other and performs it, and an audience picks the winner. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

17

A dog was the mayor of a Californian town from 1981 to 1994. Не was nominated as a joke, but he beat out the two actual candidates, and they kept him around for 13 years. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

16

In 2014, a Florida family ate a steak they didn't know was laced with LSD, and the pregnant mother gave birth that night. It was a Walmart steak, and the family of five went to the hospital soon after, where nine-months-pregnant Jessica Rosado gave birth to a healthy boy. Neither Walmart or the police could say how the steak got contaminated. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

15

Japan's tsunami-prone Tohoku region has a saying for self-preservation during a disaster. It's called inochi tendenko, or self-preservation, and it means that everyone should run to safety when an earthquake or tsunami hits, and not go back for anyone else - not even a family member. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

14

In 2016, they found a new room in the sprawling Winchester Mystery House. It's in the attic, and it contained paintings, a Victorian sofa, a pump organ, a sewing machine, and a dress form. That brought the count of rooms in the house to 161 (the house also has six kitchens, 47 stairways, and 10000 windows). NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

13

A British director made a 10-hour movie showing paint drying (as a big troll). PAINT DRYING A FILM BY CHARLIE LYNE Не made the censors at the British ratings body BBFC sit through it, to protest their charging indie and Hollywood movies the same for a rating. CRACKED.COM — Source

12

A UK railway station was reopened purely because of what train drivers did. They'd refused to accept that the Duncraig station was closed - so, after 11 years, authorities shrugged their shoulders and reopened it. CRACKED.COM — Source

11

A rich NJ guy bought his former boss' house just so he could raze it to the ground. (illustration) Billionaire David Tepper bought it from his boss' ex-wife, then demolished it, and built a giant 11,268-square foot palace on the property. CRACKED.COM — Source

10

A cave in Botswana has a key role in the founding of Christianity there. (illustration) Kebokwe's cave was supposedly haunted, but missionary David Livingstone convinced a local ruler to sleep there - he did, and converted to Christianity. CRACKED.COM — Source

9

The first commercial hard disk drive had a total capacity of 3,75 megabytes. RAMAC 305 The model 350 RAMAC, from 1956, was 5ft by 6 ft, weighed more than one ton, and used fifty 24-inch-diameter disks that rotated at 1200 rpm. CRACKED.COM — Source

8

They came up with tomato-based ketchup in the 19th century (1812, to be exact). HEINZ un 1869 un TOMATO KETCHUP GROWN NOT MADE* Before that, ketchup (which comes from imperial China) was actually made with very different ingredients: soy beans, meat by-products, and fish entrails. CRACKED.COM — Source

7

The Moon is slowly drifting away from Earth (at about 1,5 inches per year). Its orbit is getting that much larger every year, and the same process is slowing down Earth's rotation - so the day will be 2 milliseconds longer in 100 years. CRACKED.COM — Source

6

A baseball player in 1919 got struck by lightning, then went back to playing. Ray Caldwell was hit by lightning on the pitcher's mound, then lay unconscious for five minutes. Then he got up and started pitching again. CRACKED.COM — Source

5

In 1963, the Bristol Bus Boycott was held to protest racist hiring practices. NO COLOUR BAR EVERY MAN BOYCOTT TRE FRIGHT BUSES POP COLOUR COA At the time, the bus company in Bristol refused to hire Black drivers - but after an extended boycott, on 28 August 1963, they changed their policy. CRACKED.COM — Source

4

Jurassic Park

We now how know how much a Jurassic Park ticket cost: $550 (for 3 days). JURASSIC PARK That's the price listed on the three-day park ticket item in the Visitor Centre Limited Edition Legacy Kit (which has a bunch of merchandise along those lines). CRACKED.COM — Source

3

A British drama series had maybe the most surreal TV show finale of all time. Byker Grove was a serious, grounded teen drama - and it ended with the characters realizing they're in a TV show, then being attacked by a T-Rex. CRACKED.COM — Source

2

After Apollo 18 came out, a former NASA engineer had to clarify things. APOLLO 18 The movie shows real footage of a secret NASA landing, and John Schuessler had to explain there was no Apollo 18 because funding dried up. CRACKED.COM — Source

1

Steve Harvey elaborately trolled a 6th grade teacher who told him he'd fail. The teacher told him that he couldn't be on TV, because he stuttered so much--so, as an adult, he sent her a TV for Christmas every year. CRACKED.COM — Source

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