12 Elemental Bits of Trivia Forged by Mother Gaia and Distributed to Several Precocious Teens From Around the World Which, When Combined, Summon a Green-Mulletted Conservationist to Fight a Dastardly Cabal of Eco-Villains

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12 Elemental Bits of Trivia Forged by Mother Gaia and Distributed to Several Precocious Teens From Around the World Which, When Combined, Summon a Green-Mulletted Conservationist to Fight a Dastardly Cabal of Eco-Villains

When Captain Planet went off the air in 2000, a small part of every contemporary kid’s childhood died. The captain, Mother Gaia, those nerdy kids with their magic jewelry and their monkey pal, they all lived on in our minds and on our lunch boxes. But there remained one canonical remnant of Captain Planet’s perpetual row against the Eco-Terrorists here in the real world: The Captain Planet Foundation. It continued raising money for educators who wanted to teach environmentalism to young kids, even after the show went off the air. Until, predictably, the foundation found itself in the crosshairs of the show’s Big Bad: capitalism.

Read on to find out what became of the foundation — and 11 more clean and sustainable bits of trivia…

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The Blood in the ‘Psycho’ Shower Scene Was Chocolate

Janet Leigh’s body double for the iconic shower scene, Marli Renfro, says, “They had a can of Hershey’s syrup, which was watered down. They had to dribble it around me and on me.” (Source)

Pornhub Threatened to Sue a Kebab Shop

Döner Haus, a German restaurant in Manhattan, has caught the ire of Pornhub’s mysterious, Luxembourg-based parent company, MindGeek. Lots of small businesses use the familiar color scheme for their logos, but it’s thought that MindGeek is going after this one because it’s similar to one of their spin-off smut sites, Doner Haus Porn Video. (Source)

A Guy Butt-Dialed 9-1-1 Right Before (Allegedly) Committing a Murder

After a fight broke out at a Waffle House, one of the participants started telling his friends (or potentially mumbling to himself) about how he wanted to follow another brawler home and kill him. He had no idea a 9-1-1 operator was listening live in his pocket. The guy followed through on this threat, allegedly running the other man off the road. (Source)

Lewis Black Says Robin Williams Stole His Jokes

Williams was known for running his mouth a mile a minute in his stand-up sets, so statistically speaking, not everything that came flying out of there was going to be an original thought. His contemporaries had mixed feelings about it, but Black seems to be at peace with it: “One night he was on stage, he did a bit of mine, it was three lines or whatever. So much went into his brain that I don’t think he was conscious of it.” (Source)

Confirmed: Scientists Don’t Have Friends

Generally speaking, great white sharks are the lone wolves of the sea. For the last few months, two male great whites have been spotted migrating together, and the marine science community is absolutely losing its collective mind. These nerds have never gone on a road trip with a bro? It’s one of life’s great pleasures! (Source)

Creed Bratton Confessed to the Scranton Strangler Murders

The real-life Creed Bratton, whose name, and even some of his life’s story were borrowed for the character, posted a TikTok putting to rest the age-old question: Who was the real Scranton Strangler? (Source)

Arnold Made $75K for ‘Terminator’

Granted, he had less than 20 lines in the movie, so per word, that’s a pretty solid paycheck. They bumped him up to $15 million for the sequel, and doubled that to $30 million for the threequel. (Source)

The Term ‘Con Man’ Can Be Traced Back to One Assertive Weirdo

In the 1840s, New York swindler William Thompson would chat up a rich-looking rube, and after a few minutes, brazenly ask his new friend if he “had the confidence” to let him borrow his watch until the next day. If it sounds unreasonable that his ploy ever actually worked, you have to understand: People were very stupid back then. Thompson went by several different aliases; despite this clever deception, one dude finally recognized him as the guy who stole his watch. He was arrested, and his story went viral, thanks to the New York Herald labeling him a “confidence man.” (Source)

The First Guy to Sail Around the World Never Learned to Swim

Joshua Slocum, the first man to circumnavigate the globe solo back in 1895, thought it was a waste of time to learn how to swim. He traveled the world in a rickety homemade boat, and if you can believe it, died mysteriously at sea. (Source)

The 17th Century UFO Battle Over Germany

A newspaper article from 1651 records multiple reports of a tremendous battle in the sky between a bunch of black and blood-red flying orbs: “A dreadful apparition occurred on the sun. These all started to fight among themselves. They became fatigued to such an extent that they all, as said above, fell from the sun down upon the earth ‘as if they all burned’ and they then wasted away on the earth with immense smoke.” It was probably a particularly extreme sundog, but the author of the article chalked it up to a “well-deserved punishment” from god. (Source)

Captain Richard Worley Was Out for Revenge

A lesser-known contemporary of Blackbeard, Worley captained a ship he called New York’s Revenge. When he captured another, larger ship, he named it New York Revenge’s Revenge. It’s not totally clear why; his first boat was fine. (Source)

The AOL-Time Warner Merger Nearly Murdered Captain Planet

AOL and Time Warner merged in 2000, four years after the final episode of Captain Planet aired. The new management planned to quietly snuff out the last vestige of the good captain, The Captain Planet Foundation, which provided grants to teachers for gardening and environmental projects. Ted Turner’s daughter stepped in and saved the day, promising the bigwigs that she’d run the foundation, and giving them her word that it would not “reflect poorly on them.” (Source)

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