12 Bits of Trivia That Were Inside of You All Along
It’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey. The real treasure was the friends you made along the way. The reward of a thing well done is having done it.
These are all mantras for poetic idiots and losers. But I’m not speaking metaphorically here; I’m proposing that you’re like Diva Plavalaguna in The Fifth Element, and you have not four, but twelve mystical stones bumping around in your guts, each engraved with a distinct, intriguing factoid. There’s one about Cup Noodle’s bizarre new line of ramen, another about the illicit rat fighting pits of old New York and yet another about Pittsburgh’s world-famous toilets.
You should probably get an MRI or something, that can’t be great for your gastrointestinal tract.
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Quick, What’s the Name of That Guy They Put on All Those Necklaces, That Athletes Are Always Thanking?
If you said “Jesus,” you only get partial credit. “Jesus” is the end result of a series of nicknames, translations and evolutions of language and pronunciation. The basic roadmap from the original Hebrew to modern English is: יְהוֹשֻׁעַ – Yəhôšua – Yehoshua – Yeshua – Iēsous – IESVS – Iesu – Jesus.
German Chocolate Cake Is More American Than Apple Pie
Originally called “German’s chocolate cake,” it was created by a Texas woman using chocolate produced by a baker named Samuel German. Apple pie, on the other hand, was probably first made in England some time in the 1300s.
Cillian Murphy Moved So His Kids Wouldn’t Sound Rich
After raising his family in London, he moved them back to Dublin because “they were pre-teens and had very posh English accents and I wasn’t appreciating that too much.”
Your Immune System Gives Some Body Parts a Get-Out-of-Jail-Free Card
“Immune privilege” is granted to certain organs that your body knows can’t afford to swell up. If a toxin or antigen is detected in important squishy bits, like your eyeballs or testicles, your immune system has agreed not to blow them up like a balloon (for the most part).
Cup Noodles Is Selling Caffeinated Ramen for Gamers
It’s “soup-free,” meaning it won’t make a mess or force you to take a pee break: “There is no need to worry about getting your hands or peripherals dirty, making them the perfect meal in between game-playing sessions.”
NYC’s Underground Rat Fighting Ring
In the 1860s, a fighting octagon known as the Water Street Pit was the site of lots of rat-based cruelty. Regular folks and local politicians alike would bet on how many rats a terrier could kill in a certain amount of time, or how long it would take it to kill a certain amount of rats.
Someone Donated a Human Skull to Goodwill
Employees were sorting through donated items, and came across a skull with a few real teeth and one fake eye embedded in it. A medical examiner took a look and determined it was “historic” and there was “no associated crime.”
Electric Cars Have Been Around Since 1894
They were pretty close to beating out gasoline-powered cars, but a well-timed Texas oil boom made gas engines much more viable. But there was a time when private cars, and even public buses, were powered by electricity and charged at stations they called, extremely radly, “mercury arc rectifiers.”
A YouTuber Disappeared After Apparently Discovering a Supervillain’s Secret Lair
In 2014, YouTuber Kenny Veach discovered a bizarre cave with an entrance shaped like the letter M. He got literal bad vibes from it, explaining, “When I went in there, my whole body started to vibrate. I finally got scared and got out of there.” He later went back to investigate, but completely disappeared and is generally thought to have died.
Pittsburgh’s Famous Open-Plan Bathrooms
Known as the “Pittsburgh potty” or “Pittsburgh toilet,” lots of homes in that area feature a lone toilet in the basement, without walls or privacy of any kind. They most likely rose to prominence when miners and steelworkers would come home covered in carcinogens, and wanted to undress and unload in the basement without contaminating the rest of the house.
There’s a Real-Life Species of Ent in Central and South America
The “walking palm” has a special kind of root system that allows it to drop new roots into the ground if it’s knocked over. Its old roots die when the new ones take hold, so while it doesn’t spontaneously move around the forest, it has the ability to travel and thrive with no connection to the spot it actually germinated.
The NYPD Is Hard at Work on Future Crimes
Having taken care of all current crime, the NYPD is paying Voyager Labs, a very evil tech company, $8 million to detect people who will do crime in the future, based on social media data.