Comedy Remakes of Horror Movies Like ‘Anaconda’ Are Nothing New

40 Random Bits of Pop-Culture Trivia That May One Day Be the Rosetta Stone That Future Generations Will Use to Decipher Our Language and Culture

15 Trivia Tidbits for Saturday, December 21, 2024

40 Random Bits of Pop-Culture Trivia That Could Be the Konami Code for Your Brain

38 Schweddy Bits of ‘Saturday Night Live’ Trivia

30 Interesting Facts That’ll Delight Fact-Likers Everywhere

Enjoy, fact-friends!

30 Interesting Facts That’ll Delight Fact-Likers Everywhere

September 27, 2023

Sometimes it’s hard to believe that the world we live in is real. It’s full of surprises, wonder and amazement. And when it comes to facts, things can get even more interesting. I mean, after reading this post, you might just start looking at the world through a whole new lens…

30

GRACKED.COM Kevin Costner did Wyatt Earp out of spite. Costner was attached to star in Tombstone, but left because he wasn't the film's sole focus. So he signed up for a different movie about Earp, and tried to use his Oscar clout to stop Tombstone from being distributed. Spite, sadly, wasn't enough to win the competition. — Source: 15 Random Facts to Flex Your Knowledge Muscles

29

GRAGKED.COM VATHLO ISLAND-- HOME OF HIGHLY DEVELOPED BLACK RACE Krypton was racially segregated. In the early '70s, DC Comics decided to address the fact that their comics were blindingly white - so they introduced Vathlo Island, where all black Kryptonians lived. Condescendingly describing them as a highly developed black race didn't help matters. — Source: 15 Random Facts to Flex Your Knowledge Muscles

28

CRACKED.COM Restaurants are going fully virtual. Your Chuck Е. Cheese delivery order may not come from Chuck Е. Cheese - it's likely to come from a place that's only a kitchen, with no dining area or waitstaff. Many of these ghost kitchens run several brands at the same time. — Source: 15 Random Facts to Flex Your Knowledge Muscles

27

CRACKED.COM Sharks are older than trees. The first plants we'd call trees appeared about 350 million years ago. By then, sharks had been swimming in the world's oceans for several tens million years. (Still, these early sharks were very different from what we know today.) — Source: 15 Random Facts to Flex Your Knowledge Muscles

26

America and The Nazis

CRACKED.COM The U.S. government used hundreds of Nazis as spies. After World War II, America didn't just employ German scientists - it came out in 2014 that at least 1,000 actual Nazis served as spies for the U.S. during the Cold War. For their (largely worthless) services, the government would often shield them from prosecution for their Nazi crimes.

25

GRACKED.COM OLIOR Farmers are forced to hack their own tractors. Ridiculously restrictive license agreements require owners to haul their increasingly computerized tractors to a dealer for repairs, even for the smallest problems. Farmers often rely on black market software to jailbreak (and be able to fix) their own goddamn equipment. — Source: 15 Random Facts to Flex Your Knowledge Muscles

24

Half of all sloths die while pooping. Sloths are permanently constipated - they only poop once a week, losing up to one-third of their body weight in each bowel movement. And for some reason they always do it on the ground, where predators can get to them. Up to half of all sloths are eaten while going to the bathroom. CRACKED.COM — Source: 15 Random Facts to Water and Fertilize the Brain

23

CRACKED.COM The writers' room of Friends was a toxic bro-fest. In 2002, writer assistant Amaani Lyle sued Friends for harassment. The (mostly male) writers never denied their edgelord sexism and racism, claiming it was all necessary for their creative process. The suit was eventually dismissed, as the horrible remarks weren't aimed specifically at Lyle. — Source: 15 Random Facts to Flex Your Knowledge Muscles

22

CRACKED.COM Chiropractic was dreamed up by a 19th-century quack. Daniel David Palmer disbelieved germs and strongly opposed vaccinations. His idea of treating disease by manipulating bones was revealed to him, he said, by the spirit of a dead doctor. Oh, and he totally expected chiropractic to become a new religion. — Source: 15 Random Facts to Flex Your Knowledge Muscles

21

CRACKED.COM NEWS Google and Facebook are destroying news. Due to both companies' near monopoly, most of the ad revenue from news goes to them for acting as middlemen. Meanwhile, the news sites doing the actual reporting are left to scrape by on the scraps, unable to negotiate better terms with the tech giants. — Source: 15 Random Facts to Flex Your Knowledge Muscles

20

Frogs

CRACKED.COM Nope, a frog won't let itself be boiled. When trying to make a point, people often bring up this froggy experiment which was done by... someone or other. It is a real experiment, though, done in 1869 by German scientist Friedrich Goltz - who first removed the frog's brain. That feels like an important detail. — Source: 15 Random Facts to Flex Your Knowledge Muscles

19

CRACKED.COM The title of Blade Runner came from an unrelated novel. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was certainly an ungainly title for a movie. After considering Android and Mechanismo, the filmmakers took the title of Alan Е. Nourse's The Bladerunner, a novel about smugglers of surgical equipment (people who run blades). — Source: 15 Random Facts to Flex Your Knowledge Muscles

18

GRACKED.COM BRITISHAIRWAYS A man sued British Airways over a (costly) misspelling. Edward Gamson booked a flight to Granada, Spain - only to realize mid-flight that his plane was headed to Grenada, in the Caribbean. Gamson sued the airline over this typo that cost him a ton of time and money. Unluckily for him, the lawsuit was dismissed. — Source: 15 Random Facts to Flex Your Knowledge Muscles

17

You Only Live Twice was written by Roald Dahl. That's right - one of Bond's campiest, horniest outings was penned by the author of Matilda. The regular Bond screenwriter was unavailable, so the producers gave Dahl (an old pal of lan Fleming) the task of adapting the novel. CRACKED.COM — Source: 15 Random Facts to Flex Your Knowledge Muscles

16

CRACKED.COM Spider-Man basically invented the Power Rangers. As you probably know, Spider-Man has a giant robot in the Japanese series from the 1970s. As it turns out, giant transforming robots were a new thing back then, and Spider-Man's success convinced Japan to try it in other shows - eventually leading to Power Rangers. — Source: 15 Random Facts to Water and Fertilize the Brain

15

CRACKED.COM Keanu Reeves was in an awful movie because someone forged his signature. Keanu never signed up to play a serial killer in 2000's The Watcher - but some friend signed up for him. Keanu couldn't prove that wasn't his signature on the contract, so he was forced to make a movie he wanted nothing to do with. — Source: 15 Random Facts to Water and Fertilize the Brain

14

Star Wars rips off French comics. If you're familiar with Moebius, or with Pierre Christin and Jean-Claude Mézières' Valérian and Laureline, you might have noticed that Star Wars borrows heavily from them. Mézières in particular claimed to be dazzled, jealous and angry about the whole thing. CRACKED.COM — Source: 15 Random Facts to Water and Fertilize the Brain

13

Rainforests aren't the Earth's lungs. There are many good reasons to protect rainforests, but oxygen just isn't one of them. When you tally up the entire ecosystem (animals included), forests actually consume more oxygen than they produce. Most of the oxygen you breathe comes from algae in the ocean, not trees. CRACKED.COM — Source: 15 Random Facts to Water and Fertilize the Brain

12

Jazz was considered a health hazard. In the 1920s and '30s, many communities banned jazz on the grounds that it was allegedly a threat to public health. Rulings were enacted blaming the music for all kinds of calamities, ranging from mental breakdowns to spontaneous miscarriages. CRACKED.COM — Source: 15 Random Facts to Water and Fertilize the Brain

11

Friends was almost destroyed by Coca-Cola. For Friends second season, Соса-Соӏа spent $30 million to promote Diet Coke with the help of the hip twenty-somethings. The campaign was huge - so huge, in fact, that people got sick of seeing the characters everywhere, and rankings plummeted. (They got better, though.) et CRACKED.COM — Source: 15 Random Facts to Water and Fertilize the Brain

10

The Pinkerton agency tried to sue the makers of Red Dead Redemption 2. Shortly after RDR2 came out, the historical detective agency sent Take-Two Interactive a cease-and-desist letter, demanding a slice of the profits for their appearance in the game (while complaining about being made out to be baddies). The suit was eventually dropped. CRACKED.COM — Source: 15 Random Facts to Water and Fertilize the Brain

9

Hela in Thor: Ragnarok is a makeover of a different character. In the comics, Hela was never Thor's sister who escaped imprisonment in another realm - that actually describes Angela. Created by Neil Gaiman and Todd McFarlane for Spawn, Angela was later bought by Marvel and turned into Odin's first-born daughter. CRACKED.COM — Source: 15 Random Facts to Flex Your Knowledge Muscles

8

GRACKED.COM Henry Ford was a certified moron (as proven in court). Ford was good with machines, but not much more. When a newspaper called him ignorant, he took them to court for libel - and then proceeded to make a complete fool out of himself on the stand. Не said, among other howlers, that Benedict Arnold was a writer. — Source: 15 Random Facts to Flex Your Knowledge Muscles

7

The Beatles had their start at a seedy German bar. Before the Beatles were the Beatles, they were a regular feature at the Indra Club, the naughtiest place on earth, a joint in Hamburg's red-light district. It wasn't exactly a good time for them, but the experience they gained helped them become a professional band. Frida HSV CRACKED.COM — Source: 15 Random Facts to Water and Fertilize the Brain

6

Great Britain tried out ice ships during World War II. Short of metal to build warships, Britain launched Project Habakkuk to build a bergship out of pykrete (a tough mixture of ice and sawdust that takes months to melt). But the idea turned out not to be very practical, and the good ship Popsicle was eventually scrapped. CRACKED.COM — Source: 15 Random Facts to Water and Fertilize the Brain

5

CRACKED.COM You can fit every planet in the Solar system between the Earth and the Moon. While everyone knows the Moon revolves around the Earth, most people don't have the right idea of how far it is. Depending on where the Moon is in its orbit, there's enough room to fit every planet in the Solar System end to end in the intervening space. — Source: 15 Random Facts to Water and Fertilize the Brain

4

U.S. farmers were encouraged (even required) to grow pot. Hemp used to be big in colonial times. In 1619, the Virginia legislature passed a law requiring every farmer to grow hemp. Everything was fine until the early 20th century, when the plant was demonized because poor, non-white people smoked it. CRACKED.COM — Source: 15 Random Facts to Water and Fertilize the Brain

3

Austin Powers

CRACKED.COM Joe Son from Austin Powers is in prison for life. Son (who played Random Task) was convicted in 2011 for kidnapping and torturing a woman back in 2000. Then he beat his cellmate to death, adding 27 years to his life sentence. — Source: 15 Random Facts to Water and Fertilize the Brain

2

Early elevators were blamed for elevator sickness. When elevators were becoming common in the early 20th century, many users reported nausea and dizziness. This elevator sickness was caused by organs still moving when the elevator stopped - or so some dubiously reasoned. CRACKED.COM — Source: 15 Random Facts to Water and Fertilize the Brain

1

Kathy Bates' grandfather paraded the (fake) mummy of John Wilkes Booth. According to Finis Bates, the Booth who died in a barn was an impostor. The real Booth ran away, and he, Bates, had his mummified body, which he exhibited at circus sideshows. Henry Ford was close to buying the mummy, until his subordinates exposed the hoax. CRACKED.COM — Source: 15 Random Facts to Water and Fertilize the Brain

Tags:

Interesting Facts

Scroll down for the next article

Must Read

Trivia & Jokes

51 Funny Holiday Tweets That’ll Fit Right in Your Stocking

Science & History

The Most Outrageous Scandals Involving Sports Mascots

Trivia & Jokes

33 Funny Dirty Little Secrets People Are Keeping

Trivia & Jokes

20 Wild Stories About Meeting Friends from the Internet in Real Life

Movies & TV

22 Movies They Made Three Times in One Year

Trivia & Jokes

10 ‘Bad’ Christmas Gifts You’ve Learned to Love As An Adult

VIRAL ON CRACKED

1

Horror Movie-Type Stuff (That Really Happened)

2

40 Random Bits of Pop-Culture Trivia That May One Day Be the Rosetta Stone That Future Generations Will Use to Decipher Our Language and Culture

3

51 Funny Holiday Tweets That’ll Fit Right in Your Stocking

4

18 Amazing Facts To Load Directly Into Your Brain

5

5 Huge Companies That Were on the Wrong Side of World War II