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40 Random Bits of Trivia We Dredged Up From the Deepest Corners of Our Junk Drawer

Wow, this stuff was really useful 10 years ago!

40 Random Bits of Trivia We Dredged Up From the Deepest Corners of Our Junk Drawer

September 10, 2024

Think you’re bad at procrastinating? NASA once planned to be on Mars by 1983.

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40

Advantages of Bilingual Children

Bilingual children lose less brain matter as they grow up It pays to be bilingual. Aside from professional advantages, it can affect your brain structure. CRACKED.COM — Source: 17 Fascinating Facts About Child Development (That Tell Us Lots About Adults)

39

Mr. Rogers had to weigh exactly 143 pounds. Mr. Rogers being Mr. Rogers, even his weirdest habits were wholesome deep down. In this case, he insisted that he always had to weigh 143 pounds, because 1-4-3 is the number of letters in I love you. CRACKED.COM — Source

38

JAMES HETFIELD WROTE NOTHING ELSE L MATTERS 5 7 7 WITHOUT THINKING. IL L L He's the guitarist for Metallica. Не was 8 mindlessly plucking his 5 guitar strings while he was 6 8 o on the phone with his girlfriend, and a little tune came out. Не liked the way it sounded, and wrote an entire song around it. 5 5 5 SU 3 LU CRACKED.COM http://metallica.wikia.com/wiki/Nothing_Else_Matters_%28song%29 — 29 Bizarre True Stories Behind the Most Popular Music Ever

37

Cher and Tom Cruise

Surprising Celebrity Couples Cher and Tom Cruise Back in the '80s, everything was wild - and in the chaos, Cher and the 16 years younger Cruise managed to hide the fact that they were dating. CRACKED.COM — Source: Smooth Radio

36

WEIRD WORLD A moose got trapped in a basement in Colorado, somehow. Apparently, it was grazing nearby, and managed to fall into a basement. Не wouldn't climb up the stairs (unsurprisingly), and wildlife officers had to get pretty resourceful in getting him out. CRACKED.COM — Source

35

COMEDYC DEL NERD CRACKED.COM KELSO DAVE FRANCO Franco doesn't look much older than when he played a popular high school student in 21 Jump Street, and could still easily slip into the role of the dumb hunk who's impossible to stay mad at.

34

Marlon Brando walked around pantsless. THE SCORE CRACKED COM Brando had it out for director Frank Oz. He would only take direction from him via a third party, called him 'Miss Piggy, and showed up to set Donald Duck-style, SO Oz couldn't film his whole body. — Source: The Guardian

33

CRACKED YOU SPEND FOUR MONTHS OF YOUR LIFE WAITING AT RED LIGHTS. The average red light runs anywhere between 60 and 90 seconds. — Source

32

Woman faced $50K fine for missing shingle after bylaw complaint.

An Ottawa woman was told to fix a single shingle on her roof or face a $50,000 fine. CRACKED.COM The shingle was blown off during a windstorm, but the homeowner, Heather Borquez, says there are other houses on the street in much worse condition that weren't handed the same mandate. — CBC

31

40 Random Bits of Trivia We Dredged Up From the Deepest Corners of Our Junk Drawer — Read More: 4 Famous Mascots Who Have Needlessly Creepy Origin Stories

30

Apparently, the Great Barrier Reef is having a massive coral spawning event. This birthing event is really good news, as it means the Reef is recovering from coral bleaching. CRACKED.COM — Source

29

Equilibrium

Final Action Scenes 2002 EQUILIBRIUM This is a silly actioner that tried to follow The Matrix, strongly inspired by 1984-style dystopian sci-fi. It has two redeeming features: Christian Bale and some insanely creative fight scenes. The final one is just a treat: after mowing down a small army, Bale's character out-gun-katas the very creator of the gun kata fighting style. CRACKED.COM — Watch it on YouTube

28

EASTER EGGSTRA! INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE The Donald Glover shout-out For years, Glover was a fan-favorite to step inside the Spidey suit. In Community. a gag was even added showing his character Troy waking up in Spider-Man pajamas. In the movie, Miles visits his Uncle Aaron. The episode of Community can be seen playing on the TV screen. CRACKED.COM — CBR

27

Mississippi banned Sesame Street for having minority actors.

Sesame Street was banned in several states for casting Black and hispanic actors. 123 SESAME STREET 10 MIN IIII EPISODE During a meeting in 1970, the Mississippi Authority for Educational Television took an informal poll and decided Mississippi wasn't ready for Sesame Street and their integrated cast. CRACKED.COM — NY Times

26

CRACKED THE ONLY MAMMALS THAT CAN FLY ARE BATS. The confusingly named flying squirrels can actually only glide for short distances. — Source

25

denis bill LEARY HICKS CRACKED.COM Leary and Hicks were buds before Denis allegedly lifted Hicks' material for his 1993 album No Cure for Cancer. I stole his act, snarked Hicks. I camouflaged it with punchlines, and to really throw people off, I did it before he did. Louis CK also accused Leary of joke heist. — Urbo

24

Leonardo DiCaprio + Kate Winslet

celebrity Besties Friends near, far, wherever they are Leonardo Dicaprio + kate winslet The two actors have been friends ever since they starred in Titanic together, being each others' cheerleaders at award shows and on the red carpet. DiCaprio also walked Winslet down the aisle at her wedding. CRACKED.COM — Source: BuzzFeed

23

Star Trek actress Nichelle Nichols to grace one final voyage into the cosmos.

The late Uhura actress, Nichelle Nichols, will have her ashes launched into space. CRACKED.COM Celestis, Inc. said they'll use a United Launch Alli- ance rocket to launch more than 150 capsules contain- ing DNA samples and greetings, as well as cre- mated remains, on an end- less journey into space. — Fox Weather

22

CRACKED YOUR ENTIRE PLOT CAN'T INVOLVE RIGID GENDER NORMS. MR. MOM A laid-off man becomes a stay-at-home dad while his wife returns to work. Jokes about a man changing diapers and ironing shirts couldn't be seen as ridiculous today. Don't worry, in the happy ending, he returns to work and his wife gets back to the homestead. — Source

21

CRACKED.COM Only the U.S. has widely adopted in-sink garbage disposals. insinkeraborg food waste disposer Because of how much water they use and the burden they put on sewage systems, in-sink garbage disposals are really unpopular outside the U.S. For example, nearly half of U.S. households have in-sink garbage disposals, but only 5% of U.K. ones do. They used to be banned in Japan and Australia, and still are in Austria, Portugal, and the Netherlands. — Source

20

A Nazi spy failed because he couldn't stop partying. In 1944, Germany sent Erich Gimpel and American-born William Colepaugh to the U.S. as spies. But Colepaugh wasted no time to start spending the funds for the mission on food, wine, and women. Не ended up leaving Gimpel behind and turning himself in to the FBI. CRACKED.COM — Source: 15 Tasty Random Facts to Spice Up Your Online Scrolling

19

Silly String is used to find tripwires around bombs. Soldiers shoot the string into the air and if it falls to the ground they know there aren't any wires- if it hangs in the air they know otherwise. CRACKED.COM — Source

18

ROSEANNE 1988-1997 FIRST EPISODE LAST EPISODE Grieving wife Bossy wife reveals goofball struggles to husband actually died a year ago. manage her Oh, and the goofball whole series has husband been a work of and feisty fiction. Okay, see ya in 11 years, kids. bye! CRACKED.COM — Source

17

Pastry shop owner sparks international conflict: The Pastry War.

French pastry shop dispute leads to Mexican-French War. The Pastry War was a conflict between Mexico and France that lasted from 1838 to 1839. It was triggered by a dispute over a French pastry shop owner's claim for compensation for damages suffered during the Mexican civil war. CRACKED — Sonya illustration/Shutterstock
ThoughtCo.

16

THE CAST AND CREW OF THE OMENNARROWLY ESCAPED MULTIPLE PLANE DISASTERS. YOUARE ONE DAYCLOSER TOTHE END OF THE WORLD. MEN Actor Gregory Peck, writer David Seltzer, and producer Mace Neufeld all flew in separate planes struck by lightning throughout production. Peck would later elude plane death once more when a flight he had just cancelled crashed, killing all those aboard. CRACKED.COM — Source: 21 Horror Movies (Even Scarier Behind The Scenes)

15

Catwoman: Hunted

May on HBOMAX May 10 catwoman: Hunted Elizabeth Gillies was inspired by Michelle Pfeiffer. The voice actress of Catwoman imitated Pfeiffer's voice and cadence in Batman Returns when trying to find her own. CRACKED.COM — Source: ComingSoon.net

14

x EBROR FATAL A WHOLE MARS CLIMATE ORBITER DOWN THE DRAIN NASA didn't convert measurements from Imperial to metric before the Mars Climate Orbiter launch, which put it off course, and eventually led to the destruction of the $125 million contraption. CRACKED — Source

13

If NASA's funding stayed at Apollo levels, they were planning a manned mission to Mars by 1983 The Space Task Group planned to develop a lunar orbit station in 1978 and a lunar surface base in 1980. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Source

12

Obscene statues were this king’s way of saying “Get Good.”

An Egyptian king would degrade the armies he conquered with vulgar statues. CRACKED.COM When Sesostris defeated an army without much resistance, he erected a pillar in their capital with a vulva on it to symbolize the fact that the army fought like women. — "The Persian Wars"

11

Charles Goodyear invented vulcanized rubber by complete accident. Не left some rubber and sulfur on a hot stove and, to his surprise, found that the rubber not only failed to melt but got harder when he turned up the heat. CRACKED.COM — Source

10

CRACKED.COM Kelsey Grammer was jealous of the dog on Frasier. A reporter asked Grammer how he felt about the unexpected popularity of Moose, the dog that played Eddie in the show. Grammer went right away on a rant about how the pooch was completely overrated, and wasn't even a real actor. It wasn't the last time he voiced such opinions towards Moose. — Source

9

You used to be cool ZACH BRAFF beat up a kid on Punk'd. Friend and Scrubs costar Donald Braison helped punk the lovable Zach Braff by having kids fake-spray paint his new car. Zach got a hold of a 12-year- old boy and (in his words) just started pummeling him. The segment was cut from the episode. CRACKED — Source

8

MYTH: SCIENTISTS CANNOT EXPLAIN BE HOW BEES FLY. CRACKED COM French scientists in the 1930's theorized that the wings of a bee were too small to grant it flight, but only because they presumed the wings were fixed like that of an airplane. We now know that insects, like birds and bats, can rotate their wings and create a vortex to lift them into the air. — Scientific American

7

A stork survived a spear to the throat in Africa just to be shot in Germany.

A stork shot in Germany had an African spear in its throat. CRACKED.COM The bird, shot by a hunter in Germany in 1822, was found with a Central African spear piercing its throat, providing scientists with the first evidence for long-distance bird migration. — Source: NY Times

6

CRACKED.COM Rich people have the option to not get rained on during their wedding day... ...because they can opt for 'cloud seeding' service, which utilizes the expertise of pilots and meteorologists to add substances into the clouds, forcing them to rain ahead of time for the cheap, cheap price of $100,000. — Source

5

7 people hold the keys to the internet. CRACKED.COM These seven digital keys, held by handpicked securi- ty experts, create a master key, which in turn controls one of the central security measures at the core of the web. — Source

4

A 2.5mi stretch of a London Underground extension was converted to an electronics factory during WWII. - - صحيفة - J BAKER STRE CRACKED.COM The Plessey defence elec- tronics company built a secret factory in the new- ly constructed Under- ground tunnels after their factory in Ilford in Essex was heavily bombed. — Source

3

COMEDY NERD CRACKED.COM DINOSAURS THE DINOSAURS CAUSE THE ICE AGE The finale of Dinosaurs put a period firmly at the end of the series, with an impending apocalyptic event being the final send-off to the beloved characters - and one for which they are directly responsible. The intelligent species of the planet, the dinosaurs, are so fixated on technology that they bring about an ice age. The father, Earl, has to then explain to his infant son that he royally screwed the world up, and there will be no future for them. — Source: Vulture

2

Fred Flintstone, Yogi Bear and Scooby Doo all wear collars for a simple reason. It's all just to make animation easier - with a collar, you can keep the character's body still and just animate the head when they're talking. CRACKED.COM — Source

1

America had a (self-proclaimed) emperor. In 1859, San Francisco resident Joshua Abraham Norton decided the government was a sham and crowned himself Norton I, Emperor of the United States. No one ever obeyed his mandates, but he managed to get his profession listed as Emperor in the city directory (and became a tourist attraction). CRACKED.COM — Source: 15 Random Facts To Share With The World At Large

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