5 Imaginary Books That Became Real

26 Wild Sights People Spotted on Google Street View

40 Random Bits of Pop-Culture Trivia We’ve Kept Stashed Under Our Mattress Just Like Our Grandpappy

51 of the Funniest Tweets from the Week of February 17, 2025

40 Inspirational Bits of Trivia to Declare Confidently in the Locker Room When You’re Down 34 Points at Half Time and the Cheerleaders Have Started Cheering for the Other Team

27 Fascinating Facts About Well-Known Inventions

Turns out, if you invent something there's a very good chance that it won't be used for its intended purpose.

27 Fascinating Facts About Well-Known Inventions

October 01, 2021

Might be hard to imagine today, but LEGO didn't always make little plastic bricks. They started off by making wooden duck toys. Today we'll learn more about that and about other origin stories of famous inventions:

27

Oxygen

Oxygen was 8 discovered by two O people in a span Oxygen of 2 years. 15.9994 In 1772, Carl Wilhelm Scheele was the first person to isolate oxygen, and he decided to name the element fire air. Joseph Priestley discovered oxygen in 1774, and he is often credited with the discovery because Scheele didn't publish his discovery until 1777. CRACKED.COM — 12 Uncanny Instances Of Simultaneous Invention

26

Spring Break comes from a 1960 book (and movie). ABA Glendon Swarthout's Where the Boys Are was so popular that a movie was rushed out in the same year. Afterwards, college boys and girls all across the U.S. made Florida their Easter party destination, like it happens in the story. CRACKED.COM — Groovy History

25

Giant circles on the pavement in San Francisco mark the location of auxiliary water cisterns. Huge reserves of water sit right underneath the pavement, and the circles make it easy for firefighters to find the cisterns and tap into them. CRACKED.COM — 14 Mesmerizing Machines That Run The World Behind The Scenes

24

CRACKED COM GROA UNTAIN THE CREATOR - LA OF et THE K-CUP FEELS BAD Lte THAT НЕ MADE IT. Gloria Jean's COPFEES HAZELNUT ARTIFICIALLY FLAVORED MEDIUM ROAST COFFEE KEURIO FRANCIA Original SH The ONUT The K-cups disposable, are bad for non-recyclable the BOLD OFFEE environment. John Sylan has tried to offer improvements to Keurig after he sold his company. LK — Inventors Who Can't Stand Their Own Creations

23

CRACKED.COM Become the Terminator of golf. Golf Ball Finder Glasses not only look cool but allow you to easily spot your ball amongst the grass by illuminating everything that's white. — 17 Badass Gadgets You Didn't Realize You Needed

22

The first E LEGO toy IV are Mondensarat Girline A 350 LEGO didn't get into the brick game until the HOLL 1940's, more than a decade after producing this wooden duck. CRACKED.COM — Rarely Seen Prototypes Of Modern Gadgets

21

The colorful, bright balls hanging on power lines prevent aircraft crashes. Power lines are very, very hard to see clearly from low-flying aircraft, so these things- marker balls-show pilots a power line's distance and position. CRACKED.COM — Invisible, Super-Smart Gadgets That Are Hidden All Around Us

20

27 Fascinating Facts About Well-Known Inventions — 16 Ridiculous Gadgets Used By IRL James Bonds

19

Silicon used for making semiconductors has to be almost impossibly pure. For each 1 billion silicon atoms, there can be at most 1 non-silicon atom. If that condition is met, it's considered electronic grade silicon. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — Tom's Hardware

18

PEZ candy was invented as an alternative to smoking The word PEZ comes from the German word for peppermint. It was invented by Eduard Haas III in the 1920s. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — PEZ

17

High Heels

CRACKED.COM HIGH HEELS USED TO BE A WARRIOR THING. Long before it became an uncomfortable symbol of femininity, high-heeled footwear was all the rage on the battlefield. The heels allowed Persian horsemen to stand securely in their stirrups, giving them stability to use their bows and arrows. — Everyday Objects That Started Out As Something Else Entirely

16

Computers

Computers, the terror of the '80s. People were afraid of computers to the point that they refused to touch or talk about the machines. CRACKED.COM — The 16 Dumbest Ways People Freaked Over New Tech

15

Banning Theatre

Theatre leads to godlessness! GRACKED COM In 1642, London banned all plays to appease and avert the Wrath of God. Plays, said the puritan Parliamentarians, are Spectacles of Pleasure, too commonly expressing lascivious Mirth and Levity. — Theatre, Community, and Civic Engagement in Jacobean London

14

CRACKED.COM Two people from different countries developed the automated teller machine separately. ENE Barron first debuted his cash dispensing machine in 1967 at Barclays Enfield. Не John Shepherd kept it a trade secret. Barron (UK) In 1968, Wetzel came Don Wetzel (US) up with a similar concept on his own. His idea came about while he was waiting in line at a bank. Не had his design patented in 1973. — 12 Uncanny Instances Of Simultaneous Invention

13

The company that created Skynet is real in Japan. An outfit named Cyberdyne operates over there, but we're sure the name is just a coincidence. What they manufacture is... hum... a wearable cyborg for disabled people. They call it Hybrid Assistive Limb. Or HAL, for short. Yup. CRACKED.COM — Cyberdyne

12

27 Fascinating Facts About Well-Known Inventions — 14 Mesmerizing Machines That Run The World Behind The Scenes

11

The Internet

CRACKED.COM THE MAN RESPONSIBLE FOR THE 'II' IN SITES IS SORRY. http://w Sir Tim Berners-Lee, creator of the world wide web, said the said the double slashes after 'http' are unnecessary and that he didn't realize that the slashes would cause so much hassle. — Inventors Who Can't Stand Their Own Creations

10

CRACKED.COM CORKSCREWS WERE MILITARY TOOLS. Early guns were, well, pretty shitty. Bullets got stuck all the time, and soldiers used a tool called a gun worm to remove them. It turned out it was useful for uncorking bottles, so a variety intended for this specific purpose was created in the 17th century. — Everyday Objects That Started Out As Something Else Entirely

9

27 Fascinating Facts About Well-Known Inventions — 17 Badass Gadgets You Didn't Realize You Needed

8

The Apple I 187 in Girline A 350 DAAOm ICO APPLE: COMPUTER Apple's first product was actually just a circuit board. Users had to add their own keyboards, monitors, and custom cases. CRACKED.COM — Rarely Seen Prototypes Of Modern Gadgets

7

27 Fascinating Facts About Well-Known Inventions — Invisible, Super-Smart Gadgets That Are Hidden All Around Us

6

Real-life James Bonds hid maps in playing cards. In order to sneak a map past prison security, the Brits would cut one into 52 pieces and hide them on playing cards. 48 of the cards would form the main map, the four aces made a small map of Europe, and the Joker held the map's key. CRACKED.COM — 16 Ridiculous Gadgets Used By IRL James Bonds

5

In the late '70s, the microchip industry was crippled by one guy getting sick. 550 IKX708 A 9722 010 IX The entire industry bought diamond-tipped saws from a single dude who was making them in his garage. His getting sick halted chip supplies globally. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — The Register

4

Take-out

The Chinese take-out box is American Enjoy Enjoy The paper container was invented by Frederick Weeks Wilcox in Chicago, originally created to hold raw oysters. NOW YOU KNOW CRACKED.COM — New York Times

3

CRACKED.COM SLINKYS WERE INTENDED TO STABILIZE NAVAL INSTRUMENTS. In 1943, engineer Richard James was developing springs to keep sensitive instruments on battleships safe and stable. That didn't pan out, but he accidentally found the springs had this funny way of moving around when dropped, so he sold them as a toy. — Everyday Objects That Started Out As Something Else Entirely

2

The hi-tech campaign to relocate books to Google and replace books with Kindles is, in its essence, a deportation of the literary culture to a kind of easily monitored concentration camp of ideas... This death of intellectual privacy was also a dream of the Nazis. And when I hear the term Kindle, I think not of imaginations fired but of crematoria lit. -Alan Kaufman, comparing Kindles to the Holocaust in 2011. kindle GRAGKED.COM — The 16 Dumbest Ways People Freaked Over New Tech

1

Comic books are evil! IVORY SNOW - - TRACILE CRACKED.COM After the Depression, plenty in America blamed comic books for juvenile delinquency. Some places banned selling them to kids. Plenty of other places burned books publicly. — CNBC

Scroll down for the next article

Must Read

Trivia & Jokes

15 Trivia Tidbits for Saturday, February 22, 2025

Science & History

40 Random Bits of Trivia About the Lottery, Gambling and the People Who Risked Everything

Science & History

24 Pleasant Websites That’ll Put a Smile on Even the Most Serious Doomscroller’s Face

Movies & TV

40 Random Bits of Pop-Culture Trivia That Have Been Up Since Christmas, But We Don’t Have the Heart to Pack Them Away Yet

Movies & TV

40 Random Bits of Pop-Culture Trivia That Will Qualify You for RFK Jr.’s Forced Labor Camps If Ingested

Science & History

Here’s What Mummies Smell Like

VIRAL ON CRACKED

1

5 Famous Roles Obviously Written For A Different Actor

2

51 of the Funniest Tweets from the Week of February 17, 2025

3

The 5 Most Mind-Blowing Things That Can Be Found Underwater

4

Wall-E Is Satan Himself And 20 More Eyebrow-Arching Fan Theories

5

5 Real Ethical Dilemmas That Sound Straight Out Of Movies