29 Random Bits of Trivia to Tuck Up Under Your Tinfoil Hat

The New World Order. The Uniparty. Call it whatever you want; there’s a powerful cabal that wants these tidbits. 

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29

A coffee taster for England's Costa Coffee company had his tongue insured for $11.3 million. CRACKED COM My job is to primarily safeguard the Mocha Italia Blend... My tongue and my ability to perceive differ- ent aromas are very im- portant to my work, says Gennaro Pelliccia.

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28

At any given moment, there are approximately 2,000 thunderstorms happening on Earth. CRACKED.COM Annually, there are about 16 million thun- derstorms across the globe and around 100,000 of them occur somewhere in the United States.

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27

Horseshoe crabs have eyes all over their bodies. CRACKED.COM Horseshoe crabs have 10 eyes in total, in- cluding ones near their mouth, on the top of their shell, and down their tail.

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26

Since Reagan, clam chowder has been served at every Presidential inauguration. PREMIUM GRACKED.COM During Ronald Reagan's first inauguration in 1981, he insisted that food from every state be included. Legal Sea Foods' clam chowder, representing Massachusetts, has been at every inauguration since.

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25

French poodles are actually from Germany. CRACKED.COM The word poodle comes from the Ger- man word pudel- hund, a combination of words meaning dog and to splash.

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24

Male monkeys will pay to look at the butts of female monkeys. CRACKED COM Researchers at Duke Univer- sity Medical Center have dis- covered that male rhesus macaques will give up their juice rewards to get a peek at the rumps of female ma- caques. So like us!

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23

Pablo Picasso was arrested as a suspect in the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa. CRACKED.COM 30-year-old Picasso, who had a modernist entou- rage called the Wild Men of Paris, was questioned about its disappearance and even went to trial be- fore being cleared.

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22

The creator of'Beetle Bailey' coined the term for a jumble of symbols in place of a curse word. GRACKED.COM The 'grawlix' term was named by late cartoonist Mort Walker, and rep- resents squiggly lines used in place of salty language. There's also jarns (spirals), quimps (planet shapes), and nittles (stars).

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21

Mars has its own tartan, although it was designed by Earthlings. CRACKED COM Designed by Geoffrey (Tai- lor) Highland Crafts, the pattern was inspired by the colors and history of the Red Planet and is in- tended to be worn during Mars science, exploration and outreach activities.

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20

The most expensive bird ever to be sold at auction is a $1.4 million pigeon. CRACKED.COM The Belgian bird, Armando, is the best long-distance racing pigeon of all time. The price Chinese financier named Xing Wei paid for the bird topped auction records by a huge margin.

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19

NYC's Mayor Bill de Blasio is planning to extend Manhattan's shoreline into the East River. CRACKED.COM By extending the island by up to 500 feet with two city blocks of parkland, they hope to create a buffer zone that will save up to 70 per- cent of lower Manhattan from possible future floods due to climate change.

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18

NFL referees get Super Bowl rings, too. CRACKED.COM Reffing the big game is the pinnacle for a refer- ее. The rings aren't as big as the ones the play- ers get, but they are still valuable pieces of jewel- ry.

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17

The world's largest pumpkin weighed more than a sports car. CRACKED COM In 2016, Belgian native Mathias Willemijns set a new world record for growing the biggest pumpkin, weighing 2,624.6 pounds - that's 129.6 pounds more than an Alfa Romeo 4C sports car.

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16

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's wedding was watched by nearly 30 million viewers in the U.S. CRACKED.COM This is more than the Friends, Cheers, Seinfeld, and M*A*S*H finales combined. This is noth- ing compared to Prince Charles and the late Princess Diana's wedding, in which 750 million people worldwide tuned in.

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15

The is a hotdog a sandwich debate has a real answer. CRACKED.COM The National Hot Dog and Sausage Council made an of- ficial ruling and deemed that hot dogs are not sandwiches, and limiting a hot dog's sig- nificance by saying it's 'just a sandwich' is like calling the Dalai Lama 'just a guy,

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14

Although many of us would prefer not to have any encounter with a rat beyond seeing one on the subway tracks in NYC, rats are ticklish. GRAGKED.COM They show their delight when tickled with high-pitched laughter sounds that are typical- ly above 50 kilohertz, outside of the range of human hearing.

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13

Equal to roughly 24 hen's eggs, an ostrich egg can take between one to two hours to boil. CRACKED COM An egg from an ostrich is similar to a hen's egg in taste, according to some, though oth- ers find the large nov- elty egg more gam- ey.

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12

People have avoided work for thousands of years. GRACKED.COM To prove it, housed in the British Museum is a fragment of ancient Egyptian pottery from 1250 BC that kept a record of people who missed work. In both black and red writing, it kept a list of names in one column with corresponding dates and reasons in the other.

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11

Alan Turing, the genius who broke the Nazi Enigma code during WWII, was also an Olympic-level runner. GRACKED.COM In a 1948 competition, he ran only 11 minutes slower than the Olympic winner that year. Turing said that, I have such a stressful job that the only way I can get it out of my mind is by run- ning hard.

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10

In the 1960's a Swedish biologist named Lars Wilsson studied beavers. GRACKED.COM Не wanted to investigate how the animal responded in different sce- narios in regards to dam-building. At one point he played the sound of running water through a speak- er, and the beavers built a dam around it thinking the speaker was the source of a leak.

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9

In the late 1990s, environmental activist Julia Butterfly Hill lived in a 1500-year-old Californian redwood tree for 738 days. CRACKED.COM Organizers of a protest wanted someone to stay in the tree for a week to pre- vent Pacific Lumber Com- pany loggers from cutting down the tree. She stayed two years and eight days.

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8

In 2008, a Japanese man noticed that food was missing from his fridge. GRACKED.COM Не set up a security camera and received an alert while he was out that someone was in his home. Не called the police, and officers found a 58-year-old woman who had taken up residence in the man's closet, and had lived there without his knowledge for a year.

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7

While fellow actor Leonardo DiCaprio earned $10M, Jonah Hill got $60k for his role in Martin Scorsese's 2013 The Wolf of Wall Street. CRACKED.COM Hill wanted to work with Scorsese so much, he said, This isn't about money. You should do things that you care about.

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6

In 2013, Pope Benedict XVI made a short announcement about his retirement... in Latin. CRACKED.COM While nearly all of the press waited to hear the Vatican's formal transla- tion, one Italian wire-ser- vice reporter knew Latin and got the scoop before everyone else.

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5

Pac-Man and Pizza? What could be better? Nolan Bushnell started early video game giant Atari in 1972. CRACKED.COM By 1976, he'd sold Atari to Warner Communications for $28M, and founded Chuck Е. Cheese's Pizza-Time Theaters (now known just as Chuck Е. Cheese's). Video arcades were a large part of the success of the children's play center - that and creepy animatronic party bands.

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4

Animated TV-series King of the Hill was partially inspired by co-creator Mike Judge's experience with a broken fence. CRACKED.COM Many years back, Judge was fixing a fence outside his new home near Dallas after a storm. Without hesitation, his neighbors jumped in and took over the repair. Не said the show was about neighbors who ...do right by people and are basically good people.

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3

While most people think of elementary school music class when they hear a recorder, it was King Henry VIII's favorite instrument. CRACKED.COM Не not only played the instrument, but he also composed songs for it. When he died in 1547, he had somewhere be- tween 49-76 recorders in his possession.

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2

Slayer or Stravinsky? Turns out, people who like one might be similar to people who like the other. cresc. CRACKED.COM In 2010, a professor named Adrian North published a massive study on musical preference and per- sonality type. North asked 36,000 people in more than 60 countries to give their feedback. Не found metal and classical fans both want to hear something dramatic and theatrical and have a shared love of the grandiose.

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1

Snails move forward by creating a motion similar to a wave. CRACKED.COM The snail's average speed is only around 0.03 mph. In 1995, however, a snail named Archie went almost double that speed in the World Snail Racing Cham- pionship that is held in En- gland annually.

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