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July 16, 2021

Unlike in English, you can say “an improvement that makes things worse” with just one word in German. Here’s the full story, plus 12 others:

13

Les Mis

The guy who played Jean valjean in Les Mis on Broadway is also in the movie. Colm Wilkinson was the first actor who played Valjean in the musical, and they made him the movie's Bishop of Digne -- the priest who saves Valjean. CRACKED.COM — Source: LATimes

12

Mark Hamill's three kids show up as Resistance members in The Last Jedi. Nathan, Griffin, and Chelsea Elizabeth's characters are even named in a companion book: Saile Minnau, Salaka Kuchimba, and Koo Millham, respectively. CRACKED.COM — Source: SyFy

11

Paul Verhoeven has a cameo in RoboCop where he dances in the disco. He just kind of started dancing wildly to show the actors what he wanted them to do, and they turned the camera on him as a joke -- and kept the shot. CRACKED.COM — Source: Esquire

10

Casablanca

The actress who sang La Marseillaise in Casablanca was crying for real. Madeleine Lebeau was a refugee who fled Paris with her husband just before the Nazis invaded, and eventually made it to California -- and got a role in Casablanca. CRACKED.COM — Source: neh.gov

9

They filmed twin brothers to pull off the security guard scene in Terminator 2. They didn't use CGI or clever editing for the scene with a security guard and the T-1000 copying him they just cast identical twins Dan and Don Stanton. CRACKED.COM — Source: ScreenRant

8

The Ju/'hoan people insult a hunter who brings a big, juicy hunk of meat. They see the meat is good, but they belittle him and the meat (it's called insulting the meat) so his success doesn't make him think he's above everyone else. CRACKED.COM — Source: The Guardian

7

Frances Glessner

The first female U.S. police captain also invented dollhouse crime scenes. Frances Glessner created her dioramas, which she called Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, in the 1940s to help train forensic investigators. CRACKED.COM — Source: Smithsonian Magazine

6

Germans have a specific word for an improvement that just makes things worse. The word is s Verschlimmbesserung, which combines verschlimmern (worsen) and verbessern (improve), and which literally means a worse-bettering. CRACKED.COM — Source: The Conversation

5

The reason poison works SO well on rats is that they're unable to throw up. This applies to all rodents, including, say, mice, chinchillas, and beavers. Even with vomit-inducing drugs, nothing happens -- they don't have the right anatomy. CRACKED.COM — Source: Smithsonian Magazine

4

People were drafted into the Vietnam War via lottery broadcast on TV and radio. The lottery determined the order in which people were drafted -- for example, Sep. 14 was drawn first, so men born on that day went first, and so on. CRACKED.COM — Source: sss.gov

3

Baseball

The home team in baseball wears white because laundry used to be super hard. wers Brewers 21 In the early 20th century, visiting teams often couldn't find laundry services, so they had to wear dark colors that hid stains -- and the home team wore white. CRACKED.COM — Source: Mental Floss

2

In the UK, they tried to evict a woman from her castle over a 230 ($300) debt. 11 LANCE The debt (an unpaid 1997 bill) gathered interest for decades, so it ballooned to 30,000, and they tried to seize her 3,000,000 castle to finally settle it. CRACKED.COM — Source: The Times

1

Unlike in The Hangover, real card counting doesn't rely on fancy equations. 4x8 In the movie, all kinds of equations float around Zach Galifianakis' head, but all you really have to know is addition, subtraction, and division - - that's it. CRACKED.COM — Source: Blackjack Apprenticeship

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