32 Technically Worthless Bits of Trivia That Are Like an IOU for Your Amygdala

Look, this fact recession has hit us all
32 Technically Worthless Bits of Trivia That Are Like an IOU for Your Amygdala

You’re not going to want to lose these, so you better print them and put them on your fridge or something. As far as facts go, they’re pretty darn good, but if you give us until tomorrow, we’ll come back and trade them for some real mind-blowers! 

Consider them placeholders for the real-deal random facts coming your way. Little somethings to fill your brain for now, since we can’t have you leaving here with an empty brain.

Israel

WEIRD WORLD Israel banned a guy from traveling until the year 9999 (not a typo). Noam Huppert, an Australian living in Israel, got that ban because he has to pay his wife roughly $2 million in child paments. CRACKED.COM

Uruguay

Uruguay fired cheese balls during a naval battle and managed to kill two people. CRACKED.COM The ship from Uruguay ran out of cannonballs in an 1841 battle with Argentina. The captain ordered his men to shove the hard balls of cheese they had onboard into the cannons and to fire those.

The World’s Dirtiest Man

Amou Haji is considered the world's dirtiest man. CRACKED.COM Не hasn't bathed in over 60 years, eats the rotten meat of dead animals, lives in a hole, and uses animal poop to smoke from his pipe.

Nigerian Prince Scams

'Nigerian Prince' scam e-mails are intentionally filled with grammatical errors and typos. scam i I 11040 ST I I E und / 20 I | بربو GRACKED.COM This strategy minimiz- es false positives and self-selects for the most gullible and those individuals most susceptible to being defrauded.

George Orwell

In 1937, English novelist George Orwell fought in the Spanish civil war and was shot in the throat. CRACKED.COM There is now a square in Barcelona named after him called 'Plaça de George Orwell'. Ironically, the square was once one of the heaviest surveilled places in Spain.

Norway

In Norway, 99% of electricity production is from hydroelectric plants. CRACKED COM They plan to increase an- nual production by 15 ter- awatt-hours (12%) by 2020 and could double installed capacity if they build new cross-border links to ship the surplus electricity abroad.

Hurricane Katrina

After Hurricane Katrina, Cuba & Venezuela were the first countries to offer assistance. GRACKED.COM They pledged over $1 mil- lion, several mobile hospi- tals, water treatment plants, canned food, bottled water, heating oil, 1,100 doctors and 26.4 metric tons of medicine - but were reject- ed by the US.

Louis XIV

The table knife has a rounded tip thanks to Louis XIV of . GRAGKED.COM In 1669, Louis XIV de- creed that all pointed knives be dulled down to reduce vio- lence in courts and the streets.

Dogs

In the 1930s, a dog named Swansea Jack from Wales saved a total of 27 people from drowning in the River Tawe. CRACKED COM Не was awarded a silver cup by the Mayor of Lon- don and to this day is the only dog to have been awarded two bronze medals by the National Canine Defense League.

The Yahgan People

The Yahgan people adapted to their very cold climate by having significantly higher metabolisms than other humans. CRACKED.COM Their average body tem- perature is 1 degree warm- er than Europeans'. They routinely went bare naked in the frigid cold of the far southern region of Tierra del Fuego, Argentina.

NASA

NASA gave away hundreds of trees that have been to the moon. CRACKED.COM They never kept track of who they gave them to. Now they are trying to find them. One was at the White House.

Metal Music

Black metal band Darkthrone drummer Fenriz was elected as a councilman in Norway in 2015. also CRACKED.COM Thinking he wouldn't have to do anything, his campaign was a picture of him holding his cat that said, Don't vote for me.

Tokyo Tower

1/3 of Tokyo Tower was constructed with scrap metal taken from US tanks damaged in the Korean War. CRACKED.COM It is also frequently used in the Japanese kaiju film genre. It's been the loca- tion of climactic 'battles' between Godzilla, Mothra, and King Kong wherein it's frequently destroyed and rebuilt.

Mr. Rogers

Mr. Rogers kept in touch with his limo driver for the rest of his life. CRACKED.COM When Mr. Rogers heard his driver was going to be waiting outside while Rog- ers was in a meeting, he asked the driver to come in. On the way back they ed the driver's home and Rogers met his family.

Leonberger Dogs

Every currently living Leonberger dog can be traced back to 8 that remained after World War 2. CRACKED.COM The Leonberger breed of dogs were used a lot in both World Wars in and around . Many of the dogs were aban- doned or killed in action due to invasions.

Monorails

The suspended monorail in was built in 1897 and still moves 25 million engers annually. 01 GRACKED COM The Wuppertaler Schwebebahn is the oldest electric elevat- ed railway with hang- ing cars in the world and is a unique system in .

Japan

More people died in the carpet bombing of Tokyo than in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, combined. CRACKED.COM Operation Meetinghouse only lasted one day but is the single most destructive bombing raid in human history. 279 B-29s dropped about 1,500 tons of bombs, destroying 16 square miles of the city.

Prohibition

The movement for Prohibition led to American beer-makers moving towards lighter, blander beers. MARK LU AMERIC BUD LIGHT BREWED USING THE CHOICEST HOPS AND BARLEY MALT CRACKED.COM In the early part of the 20th century, brewers tried to emphasize that beer was healthier than whiskey. Today, Bud Light alone has a greater market share than all craft beers com- bined.

Gas

Researchers tried 2000 times to ignite gasoline with a lit cigarette, but failed 100% of the time. UNLEADED SUPER - OCTANE SAMS PLOMB OCTANE CRACKED.COM Liquid gas can't be ignited by a lit cigarette but the gas fumes from the pump can ignite from a cigarette, but only if that cigarette is burning at 450°C which they don't unless you puff on them.

Red Pandas

Red pandas are the original pandas, and giant pandas get their name from them. CRACKED.COM The red panda was first classified and given its sci- entific name, Ailurus ful- gens, in 1825. Giant pandas were described much later and earned their panda name because of their sim- ilarities.

Robin Hood

There is a real life Robin Hood named Vassilis Palaikostas. CRACKED.COM The Greek man, also known as Robin of the Poor, stole money from the rich, gave it to the poor and has escaped from the same high-secu- rity prison twice.

World War II

After WWII, a ship full of Dutch-Canadian babies headed to Canada. Many Canadian soldiers got Dutch girlfriends, and they'd ask them to come to Canada after the war - eventually, the Dutch and Canadian governments organized a ship for them (and their babies). CRACKED.COM

Enron

The cache of emails that led to Enron's downfall became surprisingly useful. ENRON These emails became a dataset that was used to train tools like Siri and Gmail's Smart Compose. It was also used for research into gender bias, machine learning, and email filtering. CRACKED.COM

The Testicle Thefts of 1920s Chicago

There was a sudden outbreak of testicle thefts in 1920s Chicago. The newspapers called it gland larceny, and it was linked to a craze for, well, testicles - at the time, people thought that grafting animal testicles could make you younger and more virile. CRACKED.COM

India

In India, they cultivate approximately 6,000 varieties of rice. Which might not be all that surprising when you consider that about 50% of India's billion-plus people depend on it. CRACKED.COM

Volcanoes

There's brain tissue that's nearly 2000 years old, preserved as glass. It's from a victim of a volcano eruption in 79 AD-apparently, the intense heat just converts your tissue into glass (and you become a scientifically valuable artifact millennia later). CRACKED.COM

Nuclear-Powered Ships

In 1961, they built a enger/cargo ship powered by a nuclear reactor. It was called the NS Savannah, and it's still around, but non-functional - currently, it's in the Port of Baltimore, MD. CRACKED.COM

The James Webb Space Telescope

The James Webb Space Telescope led to advances in ophthalmology. NASA Grddard The work that went into developing the telescope optics led to a company being spun off that focuses on mapping the eye and diagnosing eye conditions. CRACKED.COM

The Model T

Drivers only sit on the left in cars because of Ford's Model т. Ford 22FORD Before the Model т, the drivers' seat was usually on the right - but in the Model т, it was to the left, and the Model T was so popular that other manufacturers moved the seat to the left too. CRACKED.COM

Soup

In the '40s, you could get a self-heating can of soup, and they were popular. Campbell's CONDENSED INTERNATIONALE EXPOSITION STEREA T 1900 90 AS Tomato NEW NET Ж old SOUP olo Ea They were great for soldiers on the front lines, and in fact they were developed for soldiers by Heinz and ICI. CRACKED.COM

Pi

Apparently, 15 digits of pi are enough for NASA, it turns out. That's 3.141592653589793, and it's the number they use for interplanetary navigation. CRACKED.COM

Christmas

The Christmas tree in front of the Rockefeller Center doesn't get thrown away. Instead, it gets cut up, and the lumber is then used to build Habitats for Humanity homes. CRACKED.COM

Tags:

Scroll down for the next article

Must Read

VIRAL ON CRACKED

A WEEKLY
NEWSLETTER OF
JOKES + TRIVIA

?