15 Genetically Modified Bits of Trivia We Concocted Through a Complex Process of Cross-Pollination and Interbreeding That Resulted in a Higher Concentration of Fact Than Can Be Found Anywhere in Nature
Folks, we’ve done it.
It took us hundreds of generations, and it’s come at the cost of our physical and emotional health — not to mention our relationships — but we’ve created the perfect batch of trivia. I mean, this stuff is pristine. You wanna know how a lady survived by falling into a huge disgusting pile of fire ants? Or the trendy law going around France that makes it illegal to die? Or how a completely healthy Kevin Hart wound up in a wheelchair for an indeterminate amount of time?
It’s all right here in this turbocharged crop of GMO facts that would take Mother Nature 10,000 years to come up with herself…
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The Gayest Easter Egg in Gaming History
A gay programmer on SimCopter got fed up with the scantily clad “bimbo” NPCs that populated the game, and programmed a swarm of hugging, kissing, shirtless “studs” in Speedos to fill the screen. It’s become known as “The SimCopter Fiasco.” (Source)
Kevin Hart Put Himself in a Wheelchair
Hart challenged ex-NFL running back Stevan Ridley to a 40-yard race. He ended up tearing muscles in his hips and abdomen, and temporarily losing the ability to walk. He didn’t mention it specifically, but it sounds like he lost. (Source)
All of Japan Once Watched a Guy Slowly Lose His Mind
On the show Do Not Proceed! Crazy Youth, comedians would be given truly harrowing tasks to complete. A man named Tomoaki Hamatsu spent 335 days alone and naked in an apartment, only able to survive off of things he could win in magazine contests. He didn’t know he was being livestreamed to a massive audience the entire time (and was nicknamed “Eggplant” after the emoji they used to cover his junk). After it was all over, he somehow had trouble wearing clothes and speaking to people for a long time. (Source)
Hundreds of Fire Ant Bites May Have Saved a Woman’s Life
Joan Murray had a nightmare of a skydiving accident — both of her parachutes failed, and she plummeted to the ground. She landed on a relatively soft, deep fire ant nest, which obviously helped with the whole “surviving impact” thing. But it’s thought that hundreds of fire-ant bites jacked her body full of enough adrenaline to keep her from dying before she got to the hospital. (Source)
‘The Flintstones’ Didn’t Get Its Iconic Theme Song Until Season Three
The theme in the first two seasons was a song called “Rise and Shine,” which sounded suspiciously similar to “The Bugs Bunny Overture.” (Source)
Theodore Roosevelt and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
Roosevelt once came home from work to find his mother had died of typhoid. Later that same day, his wife died of kidney disease. It was Valentine’s Day. Writing in his journal at the end of the day, he drew a big dramatic X and wrote, “The light has gone out of my life.” (Source)
Don’t Kiss Your Turtle; So Sayeth the CDC
There’s an outbreak of turtle-caused salmonella in the U.S. — 26 cases in 11 states, as of press time. The CDC had to put out a warning: “Don’t kiss or snuggle your turtle.” (Source)
The Word ‘Tabloid’ Originally Referred to Little Tiny Pills
The word was copyrighted by Burroughs Wellcome & Company, referring to a type of medicine they produced. It later became a colloquialism for anything tiny and compressed, and for some reason, the term really stuck when it came to cheap little news rags. (Source)
Morse Code Operators Are a Dramatic Bunch
When the French Navy stopped using Morse code in 1997, they popped off one last message: “This is our last cry before our eternal silence.” When it stopped being used commercially in the United States two years later, they signed off with “What hath God wrought?” — which happens to also be the very first message that Samuel Morse morsed in 1844. (Source)
Three Towns in France Have Made It Illegal to Die
Since 2000, three different municipalities have passed sarcastic laws prohibiting death, after not getting permission to expand their cemeteries. (Source)
Bats Save the United States $1 Billion Per Year
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that bats eat enough bugs to save farmers about a billion bucks a year, collectively, in pest control expenses. And that’s just on corn crops. (Source)
NASA Got the Idea for a Countdown from a Silent Movie
The 1929 German sci-fi film Frau im Mond was the first known bit of media to use a count-down, not a count-up, when blasting a fictional rocket off. Director Fritz Lang counted down with big, dramatic title cards for each number, which became kind of a meme among German academics. Flash forward to 1958 — the U.S. had somehow acquired a bunch of Germany’s top scientists, and the practice was put into play for NASA’s first satellite launch. (Source)
