12 Indestructible, Nearly Weightless Bits of Trivia We Cleverly Smuggled Out of Ancient Shrines and Meticulously Fused Into One, Overpowered, Boss Bokoblin-Obliterating All-Terrain Vehicle
The year is 1913. You’ve built your fortune exploiting Norway's seemingly infinite natural resources, and you’ve just added the crown jewel to your waterfall collection: a real beauty down at the bottom of Spitzbergen’s formidably narrow Vestfjorddalen. This baby’s gonna crank out more saltpeter than you can shake a reinsdyrhorn at. Livet er godt.
There’s just one problem. The little town you built down there to house your community of factory drones is shrouded in utter darkness for about half the year — and morale is på toalettet. If only there were some way to capture the invigorating, carcinogenic power of the sun, and beam it directly into the retinas of your livestock, er, I mean employees.
Read on to learn about Rjukan founding father Samuel Eyde’s bold plan to drag the very sun down to the depths of a frigid Scandinavian valley.
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Magic: The Gathering, Clue, Monopoly, Ouija, Candy Land and Stretch Armstrong All Almost Got the ‘Barbie’ Treatment
Universal and Hasbro struck up a deal to turn at least four of those properties into movies, but the whole thing fell apart by 2012. Taylor Lautner was going to play Stretch Armstrong, and Ridley Scott was going to direct Monopoly, but instead all we got out of the collaboration was Battleship. (Source)
Police Had to Assure People That Michael Jackson’s Ghost Poses No Threat
In 2009, an extremely spooky video of a grotesque Michael Jackson mask (worse than the one pictured here) sparked a viral creepypasta, The Ayuwoki. The rumor spread that a Jackson-esque ghoul would appear in the reader’s bedroom at 3 a.m. and scream, “Hee-hee!” It freaked out so many kids that Mexican authorities had to issue a statement: “Although a lot of people believe this is a kind of demon or ghost from the internet, there is nothing supernatural in this matter.” (Source)
Disrupted Industry of the Day: Vibrators
“LoveNuts” are vaguely acorn-shaped vibrators with a novel and unnecessary twist: They only have one physical button, which cleverly activates a flashlight (so you can tell your roommate you’re just loudly getting off with a flashlight?). The vibrating features are only accessible on the LoveNuts app, where you can choose from three apparently random settings: “Car,” “Squirrel” and “Washing Machine.” The latter is helpfully subheaded with the words “VROOM VROOM.” (Source)
The ’90s Toy That’s Nearly Impossible to Google Search
“Flirt Squirts” were a collection of objects that were apparently female-coded in 1992 — sunglasses, a walkman, candy — that served as tiny, discrete water guns. According to the commercial, their main uses were striking up conversation with boys who were already four inches from your face, and sabotaging your romantic rivals. We don’t recommend typing “flirt squirts” into any search bar. (Source)
The Man Who’d Never Heard of ‘Tetris’
Film critic Pete Hammond came clean at the very beginning of his glowing review of the new Tetris movie: “Sue me but not only have I never played the iconic ’80s video game Tetris, I had never heard of it before encountering this new film Tetris.” (Source)
Ken Jennings Meticulously Clocked the Speed of Comedy
Jennings measured the frequency of laugh lines on multiple sitcoms, from 1954’s Father Knows Best to 2019’s Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. 30 Rock came in as, technically, the funniest show of all time, with a whopping 7.44 jokes per minute. (Source)
Punkie Johnson Eats Two Onions a Day
Punkie’s longtime friend, Dicey, revealed on the Best Friends podcast that “her breath always smells like onions no matter what. She will light a whole car up.” Johnson confirmed: “I read that onion is good for your heart. I don’t know. Listen, I just read something and I ran with it, alright?” (Source)
Scientists Were Able to Cure a Bad Case of ‘Killed by a Snake’ Using Opossum Blood
Researchers made a cocktail of rattlesnake venom and a specific peptide that’s unique to opossum blood, injected it into the bloodstreams of mice and celebrated when basically nothing happened. (Source)
Women Got So Good at Soccer, Men Banned It Around the World
The popularity and profitability of women’s soccer exploded during World War I, when women were left at home to basically run society. When the war was over, the men returned home and insisted it was their turn for the spotlight. At least 10 countries codified a ban on women’s soccer into law, including the U.K.’s “Restoration of Pre-War Practices Act 1919.” (Source)
Hillary Clinton Gifted Russia a Mistranslated Metaphor
In 2009, Hillary Clinton thought she would eradicate the last of those Cold War bad vibes by giving Russian diplomat Sergey Lavrov a cute little gift. It was a big red button — the international symbol for LAUNCH THE NUKES — that was meant to say “Reset,” a reference to Joe Biden’s comments about resetting relations between the two nations. But her people screwed it up and printed the Russian word for “overloaded” instead. (Source)
A Small Town in Norway Fights Depression With Mirrors
The valley town of Rjukan gets no sunlight whatsoever between September and March. The industry mogul who created the company town in 1913 hatched a Mr. Burns-esque plan: capture the meager sunlight that hits the surrounding mountaintops, and douse his workers with it down below. His dream was realized exactly 100 years later, when they installed a series of mirrors to act as a gigantic sun lamp, battling the town’s weapons-grade seasonal depression. (Source)
The Longest Location Name in the World Honors a Big-Kneed Nose Flutist
Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauo tamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronuku pokaiwhenuakitanatahu is a hill in New Zealand that’s dedicated to a storied Maori explorer. It translates to “the summit where Tamatea, the man with the big knees, the slider, climber of mountains, the land-swallower who traveled about, played his nose flute to his loved one.” (Source)
