30 Colorful Bits of Trivia We Snatched Up With One of Those Claw Machine Games at the Library

We don’t wanna sound like nerds here, but... Libraries are so fun!!!
30 Colorful Bits of Trivia We Snatched Up With One of Those Claw Machine Games at the Library
Add Cracked to Google

You kids have it so good. Back in our day, libraries were these brown and grey book pits in some dank, moldy old brick pile. Nowadays, since they’re trying to stay alive, they host all kinds of fun little activities, and actually have working computers!

Check out these bright, fun facts we scrounged in one this morning while we beg our bosses to stay just a little longer.

Ants

Ants were once used to hold wounds closed. CRACKED COM Primarily practiced in the Americas, people would hold an ant above an open wound and wait for it to bite the skin. Once bitten, the head would be removed so that the pincers would stay in place as a stitch.

Photons

A photon takes 100,000 years to travel from the sun's core to its surface. CRACKED.COM Photons are made in the dense core of the sun and travel for thousands of years through many layers, turning from hydrogen and helium atoms to visible light, before finally escaping into space.

Mosquitos

Mosquitoes use their 47 teeth to gnaw through fabric and skin. GRAGKED.COM These teeth are located at the end of their proboscis, a system of six thin, needlelike mouthparts, and are used to cut through the skin or layers of protective clothes.

John Quincy Adams

John Quincy Adams wanted to send a team to burrow to the center of the Earth. GRACKED COM The U.S. president thought there must be a civilization in the hollow Earth, and decided the best way to establish trade with them is to send a 100-man team to the Arctic on reindeer-pulled sleighs.

Tigers

Tigers have skin striped just like their fur. CRAGKED.COM A tiger's stripes are like fingerprints, no two have the same pattern. The stripes serve to help conceal the tiger when it's hunting prey, which are color blind to the tiger's distinctive orange coat.

King Tut

King Tut was buried with a dagger made from a meteorite. CRACKED.COM The Egyptians most likely didn't have the technology to craft a weapon from meteorite debris, so some believe it either came from a more advanced civilization, or was left behind by aliens.

The Sense of Taste

Our sense of taste is cut by 30% on a plane, and smell by 20%. SA319 CRACKED.COM The dry cabin air dries out our nasal passages, and low cabin pressure decreases the levels of oxygen in our blood, hindering our sensitivity to sweet and salty food by 30%.

Jellyfish

The lion's mane jellyfish is 120 feet long. CRACKED.COM Although they spend time in the open ocean and don't often come into contact with humans, their tentacles contain large amounts of neurotoxins and their sting can cause rashes.

Duels

Two men dueled in hot air balloons when they realized they were dating the same woman. CRACKED.COM The 19th century Frenchmen, LePique and Grandpré, took to the skies over Paris to win the heart of a ballerina. Lepique missed, but Grandpré hit and sent Lepique and his pilot plummeting to their deaths.

Balloons

WEIRD WORLD A British man revealed on TV that he has 50,000 balloons at home. Не also revealed a sexual obsession with balloons - on a show called, appropriately, My Strange Addiction. CRACKED.GOM

Unconventional Marriages

WEIRD WORLD A married couple in NYC live in separate apartments, and it's worked great. They say that it's done wonders for their marriage, and they started living apart in October. CRACKED.GOM

Samurais

WEIRD WORLD The Ukrainian Ambassador to Japan posed as a Samurai warrior. It was for a message to Russia that he tweeted - and he was in full Samurai get-up, with a katana and everything. CRACKED.COM

Google Maps

WEIRD WORLD Because of Google Maps, an Indonesian guy nearly married a stranger. RA. 3 MIFTAHUL TPA-TPQ JANNAH CIMANGOU KECA RT.O1/R 2018.11 13 09:2 The app took him to the wrong wedding venue - apparently, there was both a wedding and an engagement taking place at the same village. CRACKED.COM

Governor William C. Marland

CRACKED.COM A random taxi driver turned out to be the former governor of West Virginia. William C. Marland's forward-thinking policies couldn't overcome his failings as a politician or his alcoholism, and by 1960 he disappeared from public view. A couple years later, a Chicago journalist thought of fact-checking this cabbie's joke about being a former governor - and it turned out, it was Marland.

Cults

American Libertarians funded a violent cult. In one of the countless harebrained Libertarian attempts at a micronation, a group called the Phoenix Foundation provided guns and funds to a cult leader named Jimmy Stevens, who wanted to secede from Vanuatu. The foundation faded away after Stevens' attempt failed in 1980. CRACKED COM

Spiders

CRACKED.COM Spiders can go paragliding. The little critters can knit themselves a sort of kite, and go flying (or ballooning, as this is called). They can travel 2.5 miles up and 1,000 miles out. Not freaky enough? Then try this: Spider flight is driven by the Earth's electric field.

Flickr

CRACKED.COM flickr 1,000GB for free Save all your photos and videos in one place with Auto-Uploadr. Flickr started as a video game. In 2002, husband and wife Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake founded a software company to create an MMO titled Game Neverending. The game failed, but a feature for sharing images stood out-so it was spun into its own product, called Flickr.

Sci-Fi

The first sci-fi convention happened in Victorian England. Edward Bulwer-Lytton's book Vril: The Power of The Coming Race garnered such a following that a five day long Vril-Ya Bazaar and Fête was held in London in 1891. This is considered the very first sci-fi convention, complete with merch booths and cosplayers. CRACKED COM

Concentration Camps

CRACKED.COM The Nazis had concentration camps in Great Britain. During World War II, Germany occupied the island of Alderney, in the English Channel, and built concentration camps there. For a long time, the British government was very sketchy about what went down in Alderney - we needed archaeologists to investigate the place and tell us it was very bad.

Yale-Harvard Rivalry

Yale students pranked Harvard by handing out 1,800 placards at a football game. Instead of spelling Go Harvard they said We Suck. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM

The New York Post

The New York Post was founded by Alexander Hamilton & was a respected publication. - NEW TURNPOSI TOSTE RADIE 11 - - 1900,000 HEADLESS BODY IN TOPLESS BAR Gunmon forces woman to decapitate tovern owner - - SENATE OKAYS PREZ'S PICK FOR ARMS CONTROL PARK - Koch plans to hire 1,000 more cops ... - Taken kickin' TAXING DAY FOR It didn't become a tabloid until the 1970s. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM

McDonald’s

McDonald's did away with their miniature spoon coffee stirrers because they were used to do cocaine. PURE SUGAR McDonald's sugar = Dompli TOTAL - the McDonald's In fact, a 'McSpoon' became a quantified amount of cocaine sold. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM

A Truly Long Lost Relative

A skeleton found in a Cheddar, U.K. cave has a relative living half a mile away. The person teaches history & & is nearly 300 generations removed. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM

The Flint, Michigan Water Crisis

During the Flint, MI water crisis, General Motors stopped using city water at their plant. FLINT WATER PLANT High levels of chlorine were corroding engine components. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM

Dracula’s Castle

CRACKED.COM Dracula's Castle is just some random keep. Vlad the Impaler lived in the currently ruined Poenari Castle, in Wallachia, Romania. As Bran Castle is better looking and easier to reach (not to mention that it's actually in Transylvania), it's peddled to tourists as the real Dracula Castle.

Debt

CRACKED.COM China publicly shames people in debt. 2002 If you're Chinese, you'd better not fall behind in paying your debts. If you do, you'll see your name and face on giant screens-like in the theater, right before a movie. Millions of deadbeats are tracked and shamed by the government.

X-Rays

CRACKED.COM Shops used X-rays to check the fitting of shoes. Sure, just trying on the shoe is often enough, but using a shoe-fitting fluoroscope was undeniably cooler. Too bad that people in the '30s didn't understand how stupidly irresponsible and dangerous this was.

The Russian Flu of 1889

CRACKED.COM A pandemic in the 19th century was blamed on the telegraph. Just like conspiracy theorists today think 5G is the cause for COVID-19, the Russian Flu of 1889 was blamed on telegraph wires. Since affected towns were linked together by the telegraph, some people just jumped to the obvious conclusion.

DC Comics

CRACKED.COM DC let a harasser edit their comics for years. Eddie Berganza was Superman executive editor, and in 2010 he was promoted to executive editor. At least five people had reported him to HR by then. DC Comics let him keep this position for seven more years before doing something about his continuing harassment.

Cats

The first and only cat to successfully be sent to space survived Félicette was launched into space in 1963 as part of the French space program. Her mission lasted 13 minutes. CRACKED.COM

Tags:

Scroll down for the next article

Must Read

VIRAL ON CRACKED

A WEEKLY
NEWSLETTER OF
JOKES + TRIVIA

Forgot Password?