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Just make sure to rotate your brain halfway through this list

32 Random Bits of Trivia That Are Like a Spray Tan for Your Grey Matter

September 04, 2024

Have you ever seen that one episode of Friends where Ross keeps getting spray-tanned on his front, but never his back? He looks as orange as, well, let’s not get political.

Anywho, consider this a warning. If you’d like both of your brain hemispheres to catch some facts, turn your head to the side for half the list, then switch for the other. Tilt a small mirror to help read the screen or something.

Here, we made it an even-numbered list for ya, too!

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32

CRACKED.COM Britney Spears' Toxic musically shouldn't work, yet it does. Toxic disregards the rules of music - not because it doesn't know them, but because it said, F-you, you won't tell me what to do. The song is a chaotic mishmash of clashing genres and musical traditions-and it makes it work. Generic pop music? Think again! — Source

31

CRACKED.COM COVID-19 may put old actors out of a job. Movie insurance premiums have gone astronomical during the pandemics, and older actors have become very hard to insure at all. Stars like Judy Dench, lan McKellen and Maggie Smith have all expressed doubts about their future careers. — Source

30

CRACKED.COM E-readers can mess up your sleep. Reading does wonders to help you relax before bed-unless you're using an electronic device. The light from tablets and backlit e-readers suppresses melatonin, the hormone which regulates sleep cycles. You'll have a harder time falling asleep, and you'll feel more tired the next day. — Source

29

A teen turned down millions for his COVID- tracking website. 165,096,424 TOTAL 21,097.1 +207,530 33,775,147 United States 101,516.27 +202 25,592,273 India 18,386.55 +97,129 Brazil 15,735,485 73,569.68 1950 France 5,898,347 90,188.17 5,139,485 Turkey 60,368.92 65188 Avi Schiffman was 17 when he created nCoV2019.live, a widely visited COVID tracker. Despite the site taking up all of his free time, he has turned down offers for several millions dollars to include ads. I don't want to be a profiteer, he said. CRACKED.COM — Source

28

Mary Jane Watson was deleted from The Amazing Spider Man 2. Divergent star Shailene Woodley was cast as Mary Jane, but none of the scenes shot with her made it to the finished movie. According to reports, she was cut to keep the focus on Emma Stone's Gwen Stacy as Peter Parker's love interest. CRACKED.COM — Source

27

CRACKED.COM New car smell is delicious...ly unhealthy. Going for a drive? Then you have a good chance of inhaling high levels of benzene, formaldehyde, and other carcinogens, coming from the various rubbers, fabrics, glues, and paints used to assemble your car. The problem is at its worst in the car's first six months. — Source

26

CRACKED.COM The Nanny isn't Jewish in Italy. If you ever saw The Nanny (and you most likely did if you lived through the '90s), then you know that being Jewish was a huge part of Fran Drescher's character. Which makes it particularly odd that the Italian dub turns her into a Roman Catholic hailing from Italy, for some reason. — Source

25

Iron Man 3 didn't have a female villain for sexist reasons. An early draft had Rebecca Hall's Maya Hansen as the villain, but the idea was nixed by Marvel CEO lke Perlmutter, who believed that toys of female characters wouldn't sell. The movie was rewritten so that Guy Pearce's character became the bad guy. CRACKED.COM — Source

24

Bitcoin isn't as anonymous as DECENTRA you may think. B T8 1 ITAL BITCOIN No information about who you are is stored anywhere, that's true-but your address and other data are unique to you, and can be used to trace the ownership of cryptocurrency. Police are actually getting pretty good at tracing and seizing the stuff. CRACKED.COM — Source

23

Anime artists are horribly overworked and underpaid. While the anime industry is worth an estimated $24 billion, animators can earn as little as $12,000 a year (in Japan, a ridiculously expensive country to live in). Also, 100-hours workweeks aren't unusual, with the burnout sometimes leading to suicide. CRACKED.COM — Source

22

CRACKED.COM King Kong was going to have a real gorilla. Director Merian C. Cooper's original idea revolved around a fight between a gorilla and a Komodo dragon - as in, he intended to get real animals and make them fight. Luckily, he then felt like including dinosaurs, necessitating a really big ape to fight them. — Source

21

Guitar distortion was thought to cause violence. Link Wray pioneered the use of distortion in the late '50s. His fans loved it, but moral guardians freaked out at Wray's ragged chords. His song Rumble (which has no lyrics) was banned from radios, for somehow being a call to engage in fights. CRACKED.COM — Source

20

CRACKED.COM Not even experts understand health insurance. 200 974 200 974 070 200 974 0702 200 974 0702 42TH 200 CA BUS CON 974 0702 421996 200 e GIN 974 0702 4219902 200 974 0702 4219902 00 SEX FD 200 HEALTH INSURANCE D - 974 0702 4219902 001 J 2 MD 200 HEALTH PLAN 974 0702 4219903 001 226 FEIENTE DATE o - BOM and USA 974 0702 5200900 001 211 MEDICAID - CLAIMANT INFORMATION o PO in 974 0702 5200900 001 213 1. MEDICARE 974 0702 7950701 022 225 SPOUSE 0 - Down SELF C 974 0702 7950701 022 — Source

19

Director's cuts became a thing by accident. In the early '90s, a Warner Bros. employee came across an abandoned print of Blade Runner, and eventually lent it to a movie theater, thinking it was the theatrical cut. It was actually a workprint, before the studio-mandated changes. No one was asking WB to #ReleaseTheScottCut- audiences got it by mistake. CRACKED.COM — Source

18

Captain America: The First Avenger takes clues from Raiders of the Lost Ark. According to director Joe Johnston (who worked on Raiders), he took Steven Spielberg's classic as a template for his Marvel movie. You can see this in nods such as Red Skull's comment that the Führer digs for trinkets in the desert. CRACKED.COM — Source

17

John Cena auditioned for Blue's Clues. When the show was revived in 2019, one of the persons who auditioned to host was John Cena. Yes, that John Cena. They actually entertained the idea of hiring someone mostly known for elbow-dropping people to talk to a cartoon dog. CRACKED.COM — Source

16

College professors published a porn anatomy textbook. In 1971, three Duke University professors penned The Anatomical Basis of Medical Practice, a textbook that featured, as the authors put it, female models as model females. Costal Posterior margins and anterior axillary Not too surprising, really, considering that med schools at the time were bro-y sausage fests. Inguinal ligament Fig. III-56. Adult female, surface anatomy of the ab- domen. GRACKED.COM — Source

15

People feared Comet Halley would kill everyone. When the comet visited us in 1910, many feared that its gases would poison the Earth's atmosphere. People donned gas masks and swallowed anti-comet pills, and hucksters sold protective umbrellas. There was much rejoicing when no one was hurt. CRACKED.COM — Source

14

Amazon's fast shipping is awful for the environment. Amazon's drivers drive more miles, and consequently burn more fuel, than any other courier service. That's because deliveries are prioritized by shipping deadline, forcing drivers to rush from place to place to deliver individual packages, instead of doing a single run. SMOLE prime CRACKED.COM — Source

13

12

The first recorded act of mooning caused a massacre. Jewish-Roman historian Titus Flavius Josephus recounts the time when a Roman soldier in Jerusalem mooned the Jewish population. During Passover. At the Temple. The locals were very pissed off, and an estimated 10,000- 30,000 people died in the ensuing riot. CRACKED.COM — Source

11

hinding can be tiche people when risking Ven 0, decision laston النا CA the 04:11 CRACKED.COM Across Post-It kan Prestrical from smile desisions the result of a failure. notes based give riske * are an Bread 2 While trying to develop a strong adhesive for 3M, in Liber Dr. Spencer Silver came up with microspheres - Weight was which did exactly the opposite. Nothing became of it, until a co-worker needed paper markers that stood in place, and thought of Silver's sad glue. night) elp Triall Cast net Enor One E wide, try EGEP mentor fallews poth things goge of mentors — Source

10

32 Random Bits of Trivia That Are Like a Spray Tan for Your Grey Matter — Source

9

Milk

Milk won't make your bones stronger. It stands to reason - if your bones are made of calcium, and milk has calcium, you should drink lots of milk, right? It turns out that biology is more complicated than that. Decades' worth of studies have failed to find any benefit to bone health from drinking extra milk. CRACKED.COM — Source

8

CRACKED.COM The flu almost vanished during lockdown. During the 2020-2021 season, hospitalizations due to the flu plummeted to about 14% of the previous year. As the flu spreads the same way as COVID but is less infectious, it didn't stand a chance against all the masks, social distancing, and hand-washing. — Source

7

Isaac Newton prescribed toad vomit against the bubonic plague. Shortly after a plague outbreak, a young Newton studied medical texts and came to the conclusion that the best treatment was powdered toad, mixed with the toad's own vomit. We're forced to admit, Newton wasn't a genius at everything science-related. CRACKED.COM — Source

6

The original Kool-Aid drinkers didn't want to drink the Kool-Aid. You might already know that Jim Jones' cult members drank poisoned Flavor Aid, not Kool- Aid. The expression is also wrong in that it was not a voluntary act of uncritical submission. Many were forced at gunpoint by Jones loyalists, after being held against their will for months. CRACKED.COM — Source

5

CRACKED.COM A Thanos-like approach to population was seriously proposed in the '70s. Overpopulation was one of the great fears of past decades. Famine was thought to be inevitable, so some authors proposed triage- essentially, letting entire nations starve to feed the rest. Luckily, new agricultural techniques were developed that curbed food shortage before that happened. — Source

4

32 Random Bits of Trivia That Are Like a Spray Tan for Your Grey Matter — Source

3

Robert Rodriguez

A Robert Rodriguez movie won't be released until 2115. The only copy of 100 Years, directed by Robert Rodriguez and starring John Malkovich, is currently sitting in a time-locked safe set to open in November 2115. The movie was made as a publicity stunt for an extra-fancy cognac that is aged 100 years. CRACKED.COM — Source

2

Pigs can learn to play video games. Using food as reward, researchers at Purdue University trained pigs to operate a cursor on a screen with a joystick, and then make the cursor collide against targets. One day they'll learn they're the bad guys in Angry Birds and get mad at humans. CRACKED.COM — Source

1

Wolverine was almost a literal wolverine. Marvel took their sweet time to come up with an origin story for Logan. One of the ideas writers tossed about was that he was an actual wolverine, mutated into human form. That never came to happen, as Stan Lee hated it. CRACKED.COM — Source

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