12 Trivia Tidbits for Friday, July 26, 2024

12 Trivia Tidbits for Friday, July 26, 2024

‘Shaun of the Dead’s Winchester Pub Survived Zombies, But Not Gentrification

‘Shaun of the Dead’s Winchester Pub Survived Zombies, But Not Gentrification

Jon Stewart Says That Traditional TV News Is Icing Him Out

Jon Stewart Says That Traditional TV News Is Icing Him Out

32 of the Most Useless Things People Still Have Memorized

32 of the Most Useless Things People Still Have Memorized

Chevy Chase Was Gonna Remake Jerry Lewis’ Holocaust Clown Movie

Chevy Chase Was Gonna Remake Jerry Lewis’ Holocaust Clown Movie

39 Random Bits of Trivia That’ll Yank on Your Brainstem Like a Pull-Start Lawnmower

Steve Martin ambushed his family and friends with his own delightful wedding. 

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39

There is a forest where the pine trees grow with a 90 degree bend at their base. The 400 pines in a cor- ner of Western Poland all bend facing north- ward and are sur- rounded by a larger forest of completely normal trees. CRACKED NOW YOU KNOW

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38

French and Italian fighter jets had to step in over Swiss airspace because the Swiss were off the clock. PANIS = 011 In 2014, a hijacked Ethiopi- an Airlines plane was head- ed to Switzerland, but had to be intercepted by French/Italian fighter jets because the Swiss Air force doesn't work on nights and weekends. CRACKED NOW YOU KNOW

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37

Salted butter does not need to be refrigerated. Salted butter can be left out of the fridge indefi- nitely. The salt soaks up the moisture in the butter that would otherwise be a breeding ground for bac- teria. CRACKED NOW YOU KNOW

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36

The Pizza Effect is when a culture is transformed elsewhere and then re-exported to its place of origin. Most pizza sold in Italy is specifically created to match the tourists' expec- tations of what authentic pizza is. Tourists then go home and open up pizza shops to recreate this au- thentic experience. CRACKED NOW YOU KNOW

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35

China's monopoly on silk ended when two monks smuggled silkworm eggs out of the country. In 552 A.D. two monks successfully smuggled silkworm eggs in their walking sticks from China to the Byzantine Empire, bringing silk manufactur- ing to Europe. CRACKED NOW YOU KNOW

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34

Newt from the movie Aliens never acted again. Carrie Henn, who was just 9-years-old when she was scouted at her school in England in 1986 for the role, left Hollywood and became an elementary school teacher. CRACKED NOW YOU KNOW

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33

The FCC fined Marriott for jamming customers' personal WiFi. JWMARKOTT Marriott was fined $600,000 for using jam- mers to interrupt the customers' personal Wi-Fi device so that they would be forced to pay for the internet. CRACKED NOW YOU KNOW

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32

Authorities adopted a policy of notifying a victim's family before their name was released after Buddy Holly's death. Buddy Holly's wife found out about his death while watching TV and suffered a miscarriage the next day due to psychological trau- ma. His mother also heard the news on the radio and collapsed. CRACKED NOW YOU KNOW

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31

The FBI set up the inventor of the DeLorean car. John DeLorean was arrest- ed for conspiracy to traffic narcotics and only saved from prison after publisher Larry Flynt obtained and released tapes and docu- ments that proved his in- nocence. CRACKED NOW YOU KNOW

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30

An early species of human lived alongside modern humans as recently as 12,000 years ago. The remains of Homo flo- resiensis, the Hobbit man, was found in Indo- nesia in 2003. This sister species of Homo habilis stood just 3 foot 7 inches tall. CRACKED NOW YOU KNOW

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29

The founder of Red Lobster first opened The Green Frog in 1938. Bill Darden opened the luncheonette in Way- ward, Georgia at the age of 19. Не refused to seg- regate customers by race, even though it was the law at the time. CRACKED NOW YOU KNOW

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28

The judgment of expert fingerprint analysts is affected by context. When given fingerprints that, unbeknownst to them, they had deemed a match earlier in their career, and told that these were from the Madrid train bombings, 4 of the 5 experts said that they didn't match. CRACKED NOW YOU KNOW

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27

The Texas rat snake strikes with a G-force over three times greater than pilots can withstand. The rat snake, as well as two other types of vipers, has been recorded to strike with accelerations up to 28 Gs. Pilots lose consciousness at around 9 Gs. CRACKED NOW YOU KNOW

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26

Big Bird's species was revealed in an episode of Mr. Roger's Neighborhood. During an episode in the 11th season of Mr. Rogers, Big Bird was asked if he was related to a cassowary, and Big Bird noted to Mr. Rogers that he was a Gold- en Condor. CRACKED NOW YOU KNOW

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25

Steve Martin's wedding came as a surprise to his guests. F Martin invited roughly 75 attendees, including the likes of Tom Hanks, Diane Keaton, and Eugene Levy, to his house just for a par- ty. Upon their arrival, the wedding began. CRACKED NOW YOU KNOW

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24

In Ancient Rome, an hour was 45 minutes in winter and 75 minutes in summer. Hours would have gov- erned meetings, courts and dinners, but not in the carefully struc- tured way so many of us experience today. CRACKED NOW YOU KNOW

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23

90% of East Asian young adults are near-sighted. This number is up from just 20% 60 years ago. Scientists suspect this is due to a decrease in time spent outside during childhood. CRACKED NOW YOU KNOW

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22

George Clooney bruised his brain while filming Syriana. TURI Because the pain was so great, and since Clooney couldn't take pain killers due to a family history of ad- diction, he even con- templated suicide. CRACKED NOW YOU KNOW

21

The Eagles and Steely Dan both paid homage to each other in their songs. In Everything You Did by Steely Dan, there is this lyric: turn up the Eagles, the neighbors are listening. The Eagles repaid the band in Hotel California with the lyric: they stab it with their steely knives. CRACKED NOW YOU KNOW

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20

Japanese taxi drivers reported picking up ghosts after a tsunami. In the months after the 2011 quake in northeastern Japan, taxi drivers report- ed picking up ghosts in the coastal town of Ishino- maki where nearly 6,000 people died in the tsunami. CRACKED NOW YOU KNOW

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19

The dingo is able to get the majority of its water intake from the prey it eats. CRACKED.CON Captive females, during lactation, con- sume the urine and fe- cal matter of their pups, recycling water to meet their hydra- tion needs.

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18

In 1781, Benjamin Franklin wrote an essay about farting. CRACKED.COM Franklin wanted to make the odor of farts smell good so that farting in public will become socially acceptable. Не wanted flatulence to be as agree- able as perfumes.

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17

A Boeing 747 had 1,086 passengers when it took off, and landed with 1,088. 747 BOEING CRACKED COM Operation Solomon, which involved the evacuation of Ethiopian Jews from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, set the record for most passen- gers ever carried by a com- mercial airliner. Two babies were born on the flight.

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16

The way Mr. Burns answers his telephone is a callback to the original invention. CRACKED.COM Of course Mr. Burns is so old that he would an- swer his phone the way Alexander Graham Bell thought people should when he first invented it: Ahoy, hoy!

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15

One of Jupiter's moons has an ocean 62 miles deep. CRACKED.COM You could fit seven Mount Everest's, one on top of the other, inside Europa's ocean. The deepest part of our ocean, the Marianas Trench, could only fit one with 2 miles to spare.

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14

Fire resistant pine trees scatter their needles to make it easier for fires to burn the other trees. CRACKED.COM This niche construc- tion is the process by which an organism al- ters its own (or anoth- er species') local envi- ronment, helping its own survival.

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13

When Romania made their ice hockey World Championship debut in 1931, they lost 0-15 to the US. GRAGKED.COM Their captain approached the referee after the game and asked him to write a message on the official game sheet: Thank you for playing against us, we have learned a great deal from this game.

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12

Ol' Dirty Bastard wasn't originally intended to be on Ghetto Supastar. CRACKED.COM Mr. Bastard's verse on the hit song was the result of him mistaken- ly bursting into the studio, loving the song, and asking to be part of it.

11

PINs would have been 6 digits if the inventor's wife could remember more than 4 numbers. DEF ABC ANNULLA 1 2 3 GHI JKL MNO CORREGGI 4 5 6 PQRS TUV WXYZ CONFERMA 7 8 9 CRACKED.COM John Adrian Shepherd-Bar- ron designed the first ATM, and proposed to have 6-digit PINs, but later had to reconsider his proposal due to his wife's inability to remember a large string of digits.

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10

Harry Houdini had a special code with his wife he would use to communicate after his death. CRACKED.COM Before he died, he and his wife agreed that if Houdini found it possible to com- municate after death, he would communicate the message Rosabelle be- lieve, Rosabelle being their favorite song.

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9

Pierce Brosnan was married to a Bond girl before he was Bond. CRACKED.COM Brosnan showed up to the set of For Your Eyes Only (1981) to see his wife Cas- sandra Harris, who played Countess Lisl von Schlaf. The movie's producer not- ed that Brosnan would make a good Bond.

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8

Lawyers call San Francisco the Food Court from all the class-action suits against food companies. GRAGKED COM Slack Fill lawsuits are suits aimed at food com- panies for packing their food only a fraction of each container's capacity. The majority of the U.S. suits are filed from North- ern California.

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7

The bacteria Tersicoccus phoenicis can survive in a spacecraft assembly clean room. 1 Hm GRACKED COM The tiny organisms were found independently in geographically separated clean room facilities nearly 2,500 miles apart, and are resistant to the cleaning methods used.

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6

A convicted killer thought he was protected by double jeopardy after his death sentence was thrown out. DEATH PENALTY CRACKED.COM The sentence was dismissed after it couldn't be proven that Paul Warner Powell had assaulted a girl he murdered. Не then sent a taunting letter to the prosecutor, admitting the assault. Не was executed in 2010.

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5

The British attempted to build an aircraft carrier out of ice during WWII. CRACKED COM Project Habakkuk involved constructing a carrier out of a mixture of wood pulp and ice, and it even had some positive tests in the prototype stage on a lake in Canada.

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4

The original idea behind Marge Simpson's hair was to conceal large rabbit ears. CRACKED.COM The gag was intended to be revealed in the final epi- sode of the series but was scrapped early on due to inconsistencies (and the fact that the series will never, ever end).

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3

Joseph Medicine Crow became the last Plains Indian war chief during WWII. CRACKED.COM Joseph completed all four required tasks while fight- ing in Europe, including touching an enemy soldier, stealing his weapon, lead- ing a successful war party, and stealing an enemy's horse.

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2

New York City's West Village has a triangle on the sidewalk that does not belong to the city. PROPERTY/OF TWE HESS ESTATE WHICH H $ NEVER BEENDEDICATED FOR PUBLIC CRACKED.COM The Hess Triangle is a tile mosaic, the last portion of land that David Hess refused to sell to the city in 1914, that says, Property of the Hess Estate which has never been dedicated for public purposes.

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1

Grenada went bonkers when Kirani James won their first Olympic gold medal in 2012. CRACKED.COM The government held a giant 3-hour rally attended by thousands, gave him US$186,000, printed new stamps, named a new stadi- um after him, and built a mu- seum/gym in his hometown.

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