12 Seemingly Impossible Bits of Trivia We Discovered Through Rigorous Fence Testing That You Should Exploit, Quickly, Before the Devs Patch the Bug
You’re in a real pickle. You just moved to an affluent little hamlet in South Florida to live out your days jack-knifing into an in-ground swimming pool full of gold coins, as is your god-given right. But then it happens: They move into town.
A whole flock — no, a swarm — of peafowl. They strut, sexily, into the wooded thickets of your village. They’re pooping on your sidewalks, they’re headbutting the reflections they see in your pristinely waxed cars, mistaking them for romantic competitors. And god, the screams.
You want to put a stop to this. And yet, there’s something majestic about the peacock’s carnal nonmonogamy that you admire. You want them to stop procreating, but you can’t in good conscience ask them to stop humping. To spay and neuter them would be to deny them their very cockiness. Then it hits you: bird vasectomies. It sounds technically complex, and it must be expensive; you don’t even know if it’s possible! But you know you have to try. “Siri,” you say, your voice tinged with hope for the first time in weeks, “do birds have testicles?”
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New Mexico Cops Totally Saw a Ghost
An officer noticed something legitimately spooky-looking on the station’s CCTV. Then, instead of doing even some Scooby Doo-level investigating, the precinct insisted to local news that “there’s not a logical explanation for this” after determining that “this is not an ancient burial ground.” (Source)
The 43 Shortest Place Names on Earth
At least 43 geographical locations are tied for shortest place names in the world, including: Eight distinct Norwegian villages called Å, a hill in Denmark called Ø, a Nigerian national park called W and two lakes in Nebraska collectively called L because they roughly form a right angle. (Source)
Bill Hader’s Character in ‘Hot Rod’ Was Based on a Weirdo He Knew in High School
That scene where Dave “serendipitously” got a slice of metal embedded in his skull while using a bench grinder while on acid? That all happened, beat-for-beat, to an old friend of Hader’s. He’s said the real-life Dave is now a professor: “He’s actually brilliant, but he’s just such an Oklahoma dude.” (Source)
Astronomers Mistook the Agonizing Death Throes of a Star for Its Glorious Birth.
In 1604, people around the world suddenly noticed a supernova (i.e., the violent death of a star) that was so bright, it was visible in the middle of the day. Italian astronomer Lodovico delle Colombe was the first to write about it, and correctly deduced that it was “neither a comet nor a new star,” but Johannes Kepler called dibs with a book called On the New Star in Ophiuchus’s Foot. That sounded cooler, so everyone just kinda ran with it. (Source)
H.H. Holmes Wasn’t America’s First Serial Killer
Credit where it’s due: The guy was a real bad egg. But he’s merely our first known urban serial killer. Lots of degenerates were racking up big body counts out on the frontier. The Harpe brothers are thought to be the first — they were Appalachian outlaws who remained loyal to the British monarchy after the Revolutionary War, and killed approximately 50 people in the 1700s. (Source)
A Guy Married a Barbie Doll in a Buddhist Temple
His human wife died by suicide because his family didn’t approve of their human marriage. Twenty years later, he finally got his parents’ approval to marry her — as a doll. This kind of spiritual marriage isn’t wholly uncommon, but the fact that he’s pretty sure her spirit inhabited a sexy little doll strikes some skeptics as a bit convenient. (Source)
Kelly Ripa Found a Loophole for Eating
Trying to shed a few pounds? Good news! Kelly Ripa knows how you can consume calories without all that indulgent mastication. She doesn’t consume any of what she calls “chewing food” before filming her show in the morning. Instead, she chugs some water, powdered kale, coffee and ghee, and downs a few supplements. After work, she treats herself to a single green apple. (Source)
Michael Jackson’s Most Expensive Music Video Is Definitely Not the One You’re Thinking Of
The video for “Scream,” with MJ and Janet Jackson, clocks in as the most expensive music video ever made: $7 million in 1995 (or about $13 million today). His next most expensive, adjusted for inflation, are “Black or White” ($8 million), “Bad” ($5 million) and “Remember the Time” ($4 million). (Source)
Suspenders Are Too Sexy for Chinese Censors
China requires all live-streaming platforms to censor “inappropriate and erotic” content that might “harm social morality,” like eating a banana or wearing suspenders. (Source)
The White Knights from ‘The Blind Side’ Might Be Horrible Pieces of Trash
The movie (and the best-selling book it was based on) paint the Tuohys as a family of altruists with enormous hearts, who adopted a destitute child in his hour of need. Michael Oher claims that, in reality, they tricked him into agreeing to a conservatorship, not an adoption, after he’d already turned 18. That allowed them to profit off his name and story without having to give him a single dime of the profits. (Source)
The Serial Killer Who Sold His Victims As Hamburgers
Joseph Metheny was a serial killer who admitted to a baker’s dozen of homicides after he was caught in 1996. Horrifyingly, he also claims to have ground up some of his victims, mixed them with animal meat and sold them at a small barbecue restaurant: “They were very good. The human body taste was very similar to pork. If you mix it together no one can tell the difference.” (Source)
Florida Is Snippin’ Peacocks So They Can Keep on Porkin’
Pinecrest, Florida, is overrun with aggressive, filthy and “very vocal” wild peafowl. They’re opting to give the peacocks vasectomies, rather than going full spay-and-neuter, so that the males “retain their testosterone levels and cockiness” and don’t “eliminate their dominance.” Meaning: the notoriously amorous peacocks will still mate, constantly and with many partners, without creating equally randy offspring. (Source)
