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31 Random Bits of Trivia to Fire in Your Brain-Kiln

These facts can handle the heat

31 Random Bits of Trivia to Fire in Your Brain-Kiln

September 15, 2024

Cooking facts is nothing like cooking food. When you toss these in your brain, you won’t have to check the temperature or cook time. They can withstand the hottest of brains for as long as possible.

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31

CRACKED TATTOOED ACTORS: GET A RELEASE OR HIDE IT. Actors with visible tattoos must provide a release from their tattoo artist(s) before they can appear on camera, or else their tattoos must be covered up. This is due to a lawsuit between Mike Tyson and his tattoo artist, which set a precedent for the entertainment industry's approach to actor's tattoos. DISE IRON — Source

30

CRACKED MICROSOFT AND JOHNSON & JOHNSON ARE THE ONLY MEMBERS OF AN EXCLUSIVE CLUB. AAA ratings are given to government debt and companies' corporate bonds, and the global credit crisis of 2008 resulted in a number of companies losing their AAA rating. Only Microsoft and J&J hold the rating outright as of September 2022. Microsoft — Source

29

CRACKED RADIOACTIVE SILVER MAY SAVE THE PLANET. Enrico Fermi and his team of scientists discovered that neutron bombardment of silver could increase its radioactivity, and Fermi went on to hypothesize that the splitting of a uranium atom with a neutron could result in a self-perpetuating chain reaction that would produce tremendous energy. — Source

28

CRACKED JOHN VON NEUMANN: MAN OR MACHINE? John von Neumann was a pioneering figure in modern computing, having developed the Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer (ENIAC) and its first program, a study of the feasibility of the hydrogen bomb. His incredible intellect and photographic memory stunned other mathematicians, with Nobel Laureate Hans Bethe wondering if he was a species superior to man. — Source

27

CRACKED ALCOHOL CONSUMPTION: THE FEW, THE PROUD, THE HEAVY DRINKERS. People consume alcohol in a skewed distribution, with a tiny minority responsible for almost all the nation's drinking, a pattern that has remained more or less a constant over many decades, and holds for other countries too. — Source

26

CRACKED STEPHEN KING: ADDICTED NOVELIST? Stephen King admitted he had a substance abuse problem and his friends and family staged an intervention to confront him with the evidence of his addiction. Не wrote his novel Cujo in 1981, but barely remembers the experience. — Source

25

CRACKED 350 ANCESTORS, 700 YEARS AGO: THE SURPRISING HISTORY OF ASHKENAZI JEWS. The modern-day Ashkenazi community emerged from a population bottleneck of approximately 350 individuals in central Europe about 700 years ago, and their ancestry is a mixture of European and Middle Eastern descent. — Source

24

CRACKED DENNIS THE MENACE HAS A REAL-LIFE TWIN. Two comic strips titled Dennis the Menace were released on the same day in 1951, one in the UK and one in the US, both created by different people unaware of the other's work. The UK version was published in The Beano and was drawn by David Law, while the US version was created by Hank Ketcham and featured a five-year-old boy in Wichita, Kansas. — Source

23

CRACKED THREE STARS, ONE SYSTEM, 4.25 LIGHT-YEARS AWAY: ALPHA CENTAURI. Alpha Centauri is the closest star system to Earth, consisting of three stars: Alpha Centauri A, Alpha Centauri B, and Proxima Centauri. Proxima Centauri is the closest star to Earth, located 4.25 light-years away, while Alpha Centauri A and В are a binary pair located 4.35 light-years away. They orbit a common center of gravity every 80 years. — Source

22

CRACKED GERALD FORD'S GREAT ALAMO BEEF. Former President Gerald Ford committed a food faux pas during an April 1976 visit to the Alamo by picking up a plate of tamales still shuck-wrapped, but was quickly corrected by a member of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas. — Source

21

Computers

CRACKED AN EVIL COMPUTER WAS ELECTED MAYOR. A team from the University of Michigan found a flaw in the code of a new online voting system in Washington D.C., and exploited it to elect a malevolent computer program mayor (and other fictional characters to other positions). It took two days for officials to realize they had been hacked. ULL 100110010000100000 1 00 00101011101000110 011001010111001001 010000001000001011 0 11 000000001110011011010101 0001101 1010000010110 0110110111101101110 11 0011101 0 110100101101110011 11101000110010101110 11 01000016 0011 1111001000000110001 110011000010111001001 10010 111 0110010000100000011 110001101100101001000 011 1 0 11011000010010000 E COTTTOTTOOOOOOTOOTIC 10010 TTOOTTOOTTOTOOTOLT 11000110111010101101 K 101 TTTOTTOTTOOOOTOOTOTO C 1100110010101110010 1 — Source

20

CRACKED LA'S PALM TREES AREN'T NATIVE. Palm trees have become an iconic symbol of Los Angeles, having been imported to the region in the late 1700s and popularized during the Victorian era. In the 1930s, a large effort was made to plant 40,000 palms as part of an unemployment relief effort, cementing their place in the city's identity. — Source

19

CRACKED THREE BAGS OF GOLD: THE UNTOLD STORY OF SANTA'S GENEROSITY. Saint Nicholas of Bari, better known to many of us as Santa Claus or Father Christmas, is symbolized by three golden balls representing a dowry of three bags of gold he gave to three girls. A painting attributed to Giovanni Battista Cima da Conegliano, The Virgin and Child with Saints is an example of this. — Source

18

CRACKED PET FOOD REVOLUTION: NO MORE WHITE POOPS. In the 1970s and '80s, white dog poop was a common sight due to an overabundance of calcium in pet food. Today, pet food brands have changed their formulas to include more fiber and less calcium, resulting in healthier, more-naturally looking waste. — Source

17

CRACKED CGI: MORE EXPENSIVE THAN AN AIRLINER Christopher Nolan explained that they crashed a real 747 instead of using CG for the set-piece in spy-thriller Tenet, revealing that it was more efficient to buy a real plane than to use miniatures or CGI. — Source

16

31 Random Bits of Trivia to Fire in Your Brain-Kiln — Source

15

31 Random Bits of Trivia to Fire in Your Brain-Kiln — Source

14

FORTUNE COOKIES WERE INVENTED IN CALIFORNIA. It's not clear if they were created by a Chinese immigrant in Los Angeles or a Japanese immigrant in San Francisco. Either way, they didn't come all the way from China. CRACKED.COM — Source

13

Your sunscreen probably contains CRACKED.COM oxidized metals. FAGE 60 SUNSCREEN LA ROCHE-POSAY LABORATOIRE DERMATOLOGIQUE BROAD SPECTRUM SPF60 ANTHELIOS 60 Les or Teau thermale de La Roche Par ULTRA LIGHT SUNSCREEN FLUID vio CELL-OX SHIELD XL Advanced UVA/UVB technology + Antioxidant protection Titanium oxide and zinc oxide in suncreens SHAKE act as barriers to sun rays - they're like armor you spread over your skin. — Source

12

Table salt is what gives shampoo its thick, gooey texture. CRACKED COM — Source

11

Cigarettes made by American brands contain sugar, which makes them even more addictive and toxic. GRAGKED.COM — Source

10

Turns out, T-Rexes grew so fast, you could almost watch them grow. Teenage T-Rexes could sometimes add 35-45 pounds to their frame in as little as a week. CRACKED.COM — Source

9

In Sweden, people sometimes do something that's known as death cleaning. It basically involves getting rid of everything you don't need before you die, so others won't have to clean up after you. CRACKED.COM — Source

8

People tried to grow vanilla for 300 years in Europe, totally unsuccessfully. In 1836, they finally figured it was because vanilla was pollinated by an insect that didn't live in Europe. CRACKED.COM — Source

7

The vice president of the US wasn't always the president's running mate. Before they added the 12th amendment, it was whoever got the 2nd most votes in the election. CRACKED.COM — Source

6

Redwall

The guy who wrote the Redwall series was actually an unhappy milkman. - IN EVENTERS The Original ENTERS سعيد : ATE Well, he was unhappy because he'd been reading to blind kids, and he thought the books available were pretty crappy, so he wrote new ones. CRACKED.COM — Source

5

Clint Eastwood only became Dirty Harry after everyone else said no. The role first got offered to Steve McQueen, Burt Lancaster, and Paul Newman, among others, but they all thought Harry was too right-wing. CRACKED.COM — Source

4

Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama hates Hollywood's Dragon Ball movie. Не hated Dragonball: Evolution so much, he says, that that made him rewrite the whole script for Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods. CRACKED.COM — Source

3

There's no place in Michigan where you're more than six miles from water. Which is kind of amazing to think about, but there are 11,000 lakes in the state, so it's actually super hard to avoid them. CRACKED.COM — Source

2

The Christmas tree in front of the Rockefeller Center doesn't get thrown away. Instead, it gets cut up, and the lumber is then used to build Habitats for Humanity homes. CRACKED.COM — Source

1

Britain's Colchester Zoo uses mirrors to help flamingos breed in captivity. Flamingos apparently aren't too enthusiastic about breeding when there's not a lot of them around, but mirrors make it look like there's a big flock. CRACKED.COM — Source

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