31 Random Facts We Just Thought Were Kinda Neat
Simple as that!
![31 Random Facts We Just Thought Were Kinda Neat](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/1/9/9/810199_320x180.jpg)
Ever learn about something neat and just had to share it? Like it’s a random fact about nothing in particular, but you’re dying to text it to a friend, send a mass work email about it, impress your date with it or even confess about it to a priest just so you had someone to share it with. Well, we’re here to help. Below, we have 31 neat facts we would like to share with you to keep the circle unbroken…
![Pangolins' tongues are longer than their bodies. When fully extended, the tongue of the pangolin reaches out more than a foot. This may not seem too impressive, until you realize the tongue connects not to the back of their mouth, but all the way down into their pelvis. The toothless pangolin uses this extremity to snag ants and termites to swallow whole. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/1/7/9/810179.jpg)
![The Dancing Plague of 1518 affected 400 people in a month long groove-fest. In the summer of 1518, in what is now modern-day France, a woman began to dance in the street. Other women joined in, and eventually between 50 and 400 people were mysteriously affected with a mania that caused them to dance to exhaustion until that September. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/1/7/7/810177.jpg)
![A woman's mouth was impregnated by a dead squid. The partially cooked squid that one 63 year old woman bit into in 2012 still had organs intact, and shot a pod of spermatophores into the soft membranes of her mouth. After she felt a pricking and foreign-body sensation, doctors removed the dozen small, white, bug-like organisms that the squid left behind. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/1/7/5/810175.jpg)
![There is a tabletop roleplaying game where you roll dice to determine the circumference of your character's butthole. F.A.T.A.L., which stands for Fantasy Adventure to Adult Lechery, was released in 2002 as a sexually graphic roleplaying game similar to Dungeons & Dragons. The widely panned game gives players several physical attributes for their characters that they can roll dice for, including genital and anus size. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/1/7/8/810178.jpg)
![Women marched in revealing clothing to test a claim that their immodesty caused earthquakes. Inspired by blogger Jey McCreight, the aptly named Boobquake rally took place on April 26, 2010 in protest of an Iranian cleric's controversial beliefs blaming women who dress immodestly for causing earthquakes. McCreight wrote, I encourage other female skeptics to join me and embrace the supposed supernatural power of their breasts. With the power of our scandalous bodies combined, we should surely produce an CRACKED.COM earthquake.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/1/7/6/810176.jpg)
![Playing video games helps you make quick decisions. - C People who were given questions that required quick solutions could answer them faster if they had just played action video games prior. Not only did their reaction time increase, but they were as accurate as their slower peers. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/1/7/4/810174.jpg)
![A fever dream of James Cameron's lead to iconic Terminator imagery. The image of the chrome skeleton of a Terminator rising from a fiery Hellscape came to Cameron in a dream when sick with a fever. When he woke up, he sketched a metal skeleton, torn in half, crawling towards a terrified woman, which would become the finale of The Terminator. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/1/7/2/810172.jpg)
![One man successfully traded a paperclip for progressively larger items, until he had a house. Kyle-Not S CIN Ricky Over the course of 14 up-trades, which included a fish pen, a snowmobile, and a recording contract, Canadian blogger Kyle MacDonald was able to trade one paid, credited, speaking role in a film by Public Media Works for a house. The Town of Kipling, Saskatchewan offered the final trade, and welcomed him by making him Honorary Mayor of Kipling for One Day. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/1/7/3/810173.jpg)
![A mass extinction 252 million years ago killed most of life on Earth, and we have no idea why. Over the course of a few million years (basically nothing in geological time), 96% of marine life and 70% of land-based species vanished in The Great Permian Extinction, otherwise known as The Great Dying. This is the only mass-extinction event to have affected insects, possibly caused by an asteroid, volcanoes, or a stagnant ocean spurred on by the supercontinent Pangea. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/1/7/0/810170.jpg)
![Toast really does land butter-side down more often than not. Toast always lands with the butter-side down isn't just a pessimistic worldview, it's a fact. A study by Robert Matthews confirmed that, when pushed from a table, toast will land butter-side down the majority of times, more than just the law of chance would predict. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/1/7/1/810171.jpg)
![Tom Hanks almost starred in the 1993 Super Mario Bros. movie. The live action Super Mario movie was an unmitigated disaster, but it could have been way different. Tom Hanks was cast in the lead role, but coming off of a string of box office bombs, the role of Mario went instead to Bob Hoskins. Arnold Schwarzenegger was looked at for the corporate lizard-person Bowser, but he turned it down. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/1/6/9/810169.jpg)
![Alcohol turns the friggin' flys gay. Fruit flies are notorious breeders that multiply quickly if you aren't careful disposing of food scraps in your home. But a group from Pennsylvania State University found that when exposed to ethanol, the usually butch male fruit flies began exhibiting homosexual courtship activities. Not that there's anything wrong with that. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/1/6/8/810168.jpg)
![A World of Warcraft player reached level 120 by only picking flowers. WoW player Doubleagent plays as a Pandaren, a panda-like race that either chooses to fight for the Horde or the Alliance. Doubleagent never chose a side, and in fact never left The Wandering Isle (a beginner area most players leave by level 10), choosing instead to level all the way to 120 with only the small XP gained from harvesting flowers. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/1/6/7/810167.jpg)
![Moaning Myrtle from Harry Potter was played by a 36 year old woman. In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002), the ghostly figure Moaning Myrtle, slain by the Basilisk when she was just 15, haunts one of Hogwarts' bathrooms. She was played by 36 year old Shirley Henderson, which makes the scene where she sexually harasses the teenage Harry super uncomfortable. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/1/6/5/810165.jpg)
![Grocery stores use narrow checkout lanes to make it harder to change your mind. If you've ever had to maneuver your shopping cart through the narrow checkout lane of a supermarket and found yourself stuck, unable to backout, just know you can place the blame squarely on the store itself. These lanes are made purposefully just-too-narrow so it's difficult to put back products you decide you don't need. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/1/6/4/810164.jpg)
![CRACKED.COM The classic circus music was written as a heroic theme. The goofy tune was created by respected Czech composer Julius Fučík as an epic military march (titled Entrance of the Gladiators). Then a reworking by a Canadian arranger started being used for clowns, and no one took it seriously ever again.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/1/6/3/810163.jpg)
![The Founding Fathers thought that independence was a mistake. The aristocratic Founding Fathers saw regular Americans as vile ignoramuses, and had zero faith in the people's ability to govern themselves. Independence, however, was left as the only option when attempts to patch things up with King George III fell through. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/1/6/6/810166.jpg)
![Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 had to use fake Walkmans. The first GotG movie turned the vintage players into hot items, raising their price into the thousands. This became a problem when a few were needed for the sequel. So instead of using the genuine things, the prop team built non-functioning replicas. SONY aLAMAN CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/1/6/2/810162.jpg)
![Leslie Coffelt saved President Truman's life e-after being shot to death. Puerto Rican nationalists shot Officer Leslie W. Coffelt, in an attempt to assassinate Truman. Coffelt died-but not before crawling out of his guard booth and killing the guy who shot him. (The guy's partner had already been stopped by the Secret Service.) CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/1/6/1/810161.jpg)
![CRACKED.COM Kevin Costner got mad because people didn't get to see his penis. De 1999's For Love of the Game included a shot of Costner's untouchables, even though it was supposed to be a PG-13 film. After test audiences giggled at the scene, it was just cut - which pissed Costner off. It just flies in the face of who I am, he said. That's easy for him to say - that was the only thing flying in his face.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/1/6/0/810160.jpg)
![CRACKED.COM Most of those gross cooking videos trace back to one guy. The revolting viral videos of people making food come from Rick Lax, a street magician who realized those did better on social media than card tricks. We're just trying to put smiles on your faces, he says (probably very aware that the reaction is quite the opposite).](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/1/5/9/810159.jpg)
![America had a (self-proclaimed) emperor. In 1859, San Francisco resident Joshua Abraham Norton decided the government was a sham and crowned himself Norton I, Emperor of the United States. No one ever obeyed his mandates, but he managed to get his profession listed as Emperor in the city directory (and became a tourist attraction). CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/1/5/7/810157.jpg)
![CRACKED.COM Lightsaber combat is based on all forms of swordplay. Stunt coordinator Nick Gillard created the amazing lightsaber fights in the Star Wars prequels. Не basically came up with a new martial art by combining a ton of forms of sword fighting - and even things unrelated to swords, like tennis or tree-chopping.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/1/5/6/810156.jpg)
![- - Rom-com director Nora Ephron kept telling everyone who Deep Throat was. Journalist Carl Bernstein never told Ephron, his wife at the time, that Deep Throat was FBI agent Mark Felt - but still, she quickly figured out who the anonymous Watergate source was. Then she spent years telling the secret to anyone who listened - but no one believed her. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/1/5/5/810155.jpg)
![A fungus could protect astronauts from radiation. Cladosporium sphaerospermum lives (thrives, in fact) inside the destroyed Chernobyl reactors. It's thought to achieve this through radiosyntesis, a form of photosynthesis that uses radiation instead of light. Researchers believe that a relatively thin layer of it could effectively shield astronauts in space. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/1/5/8/810158.jpg)
![CRACKED.COM Europeans ended slavery in Japan (by liking slaves too much). In the 16th century, Japanese slaves became the must-have items for the Portuguese. Toyotomi Hideyoshi, Japan's ruler at the time, was disgusted by those Christian foreigners buying so many slaves that should be enslaved in Japan, not abroad. So he banned the institution altogether (also, Christianity).](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/1/5/2/810152.jpg)
![In the American South, dirt is edible (and actually eaten). Kaolin, a kind of white clay, is very common in Central Georgia - and one of its many uses is stuffing your face with it. There's a long, semi-illegal tradition of eating the stuff, which is a lot easier to digest than most other mineral deposits. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/1/5/1/810151.jpg)
![Lice helped study the origin of clothing. Clothes don't preserve well, but we do know that body lice evolved from head lice when we started using clothes. So by studying the nasty bugs' genetic history, researchers have concluded that we stopped walking around naked about 170,000 years ago. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/1/5/4/810154.jpg)
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![CRACKED.COM SNL is a traumatizing gig. Sabotage, backstabbings, degradation, performers refusing scripts written by women/younger members, drug-fueled BS, even fistfights - those are the kinds of horror stories former SNL cast members often recount. Toxic working environment? Hell, this is the Chernobyl of comedy.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/1/5/3/810153.jpg)
![The overworld in Minecraft is 9 million times larger than Earth. The procedurally generated world of Minecraft populates a little at a time, following the POV of your character. If you were to fly from one end of the overworld to as far as it can go, going as fast as the game allows, it would take you 25 years to reach the end. CRACKED.COM](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/1/4/9/810149.jpg)